Frugality Pledge

Natalie McNeal of the Frugalista Files was on Talk of the Nation this afternoon, and I am inspired. I'm going to take a frugality pledge of my very own. Granted, I'm just going to pledge for the time between now and when I leave for Scotland to see how it goes. I'm not going to be quite as draconian as Natalie (I have to have my dry cleaning), but I'm going to try several of her ideas and see how much money I save.

Here's the plan:

1. No shopping. None. Zero, zip, nada, niente. No Ebay, no Etsy, no sales, no vintage, no nothing. This part should be easy, because I have everything a single woman could possibly want.

2. No buying new books. This means that I will have to renew my library card, so that I can still participate in my book groups.

3. No eating out. This means that I will have to cook more often and brown-bag it to work. I may have to make some exceptions when I'm on the road, but the one thing I can do is avoid fast food. It's expensive, it's bad for me, and I tend to use my own money to buy it when I'm travelling. If I stop and eat at a sit-down restaurant when I'm on the road, I use my company credit card.

4. No entertainments that cost money. No concerts, no movie theaters, no plays, no ballgames, no new DVDs, no new CDs. Of course, the library has DVDs...

5. No air conditioning until June. This may be tough, but I'm almost never at my house during the hours of the day when the house is the hottest, so I should be able to manage.