CentsAbility 30 Day Challenge

How come none of you told me that having 4 kids was gonna to be so expensive?

We’re bleeding green over here and never mind Christmas people, fall is the worst! Back to school supplies, back to school clothes, re-stocking the pantry with all the necessities for daily lunches, school fees, bus fees, music classes, hockey equipment, horseback riding lessons, my hand is cramping just thinking about all those cheques I have to write this month.

Now that I’m back to work after eleven years at home with these little money suckers, I need to make some serious changes and start saving money from my paycheques where I can because never mind baby, mama needs a new pair of shoes. Just kidding that was just a joke but what isn’t a joke is that I’ve accepted the #CentsAbility 30-Day Challenge and for the next month I’m going to change my spending habits in order to save some serious cashola.

 

 

Here’s my plan…

I go to the big box stores at least once a month, like most families do, to stock up on pantry essentials like school lunch snacks and after school snacks. My kids make their own lunches every day which includes 2 different servings of fruit, a cheese stick, a sandwich and 2 “snack” items. Well, since I can’t grow fruit in my back yard in Calgary and I can’t make home made cheese sticks, I have decided to stop buying the over priced and over processed snack foods.

No more gummy snacks, no more bear paw cookies, no more fig bars, no more granola bars. I am going to skip the snack isle and instead I plan to bake home made treats and snacks for my kids at a fraction of the cost and bank the savings over the next 30 days and considering my last trip to the store consisted of no less than 7 big boxes of costly snack items, I think I’ll save a lot.

Bottom line, I’ll be baking instead of buying. Sounds simple enough.

Think you’re up for the challenge?

Here’s how you can participate…

Take a photo of how you’re CentsAbility 30 Day Challenge is going and post it to Instagram using the hashtag #CentsAbility. Did you make your extra large chai latte at home and bring it to work in your to-go cup? Snap a pick and post it.

 

 

 

Then join me and the other CentsAbility Challengers for a Twitter party on Wednesday October 8th, 2014 at 9pm EST. We’ll be chatting about money saving tips, updates on how the challenge is going and money education with Manulife.

Lets take back our pay cheques one home made muffin at a time!