March Spring Clean: Tenner Week: Day 1

Hello hipster kittens, it’s time for Tenner Week! Cut that spending right back to just £10 for the next 7 days (neatly timed to coincide with the week before payday, for anyone who’s grazing uncomfortably close to their overdraft limit this month).

The £10 is for ‘discretionary spending’ – entertainment, extra food, drinks and so on. It does not include work-related expenses such as travel, or things like household bills and expenditure on pets or kids. There’s also a limit on TV, to make sure you don’t spend the week at home watching the telly and stuck in a boring rut.

This time around we’re doing one thing each day as well as keeping total spending to £10 or less for the week. Here’s the outline:

• Day 1: Take an inventory (that’s today, and all you have to do is work out what food and drink you already have in the house – ideally make a menu too to help use it all up).
• Day 2: Get out on the cheap
• Day 3: Find a freebie
• Day 4: Mend something
• Day 5: Beauty night
• Day 6: Stay social
• Day 7: Have a no-spend day

The full rules of Tenner Week are here. If you’d like some advice about eating well on a budget, see our article on how to live on £10 a week.

My inventory found a few food items that I wasn’t aware of – Beau did some shopping the other day that I’d forgotten about. We have enough in the cupboards, freezer and kitchen garden to get by for the week, I think, and a rough menu has been sketched out. Also, a few things have been transferred to the freezer to stop them spoiling.

For dinner we both wanted something healthy after last night’s epic toad in the hole bonanza, so I put together a ‘storecupboard salad’ with longlife ingredients like cous cous, beetroot, orange slices and grilled halloumi, and a home made salad dressing (oil, mustard, lemon juice, herbs).

Then we watched a recorded American TV show with the ads blipped out, so I’ve used up 30 minutes of my TV ration.

Total cash spent today: £0.00.

***

If you’d like a full month-long Jump Start programme with lots of extra activities and resources – including a comprehensive Tenner Week – we’ve made one in ebook format that can be downloaded from Amazon. Find out more about the Jump Start 2013 ebook.

***