Mini Money Challenges | brokeGIRLrich
Trying to take giant steps towards your goals is awesome, but sometimes getting started is difficult. Or things may be going well, but you still want to improve your finances a little more and you’re not sure where to start.
I was thinking about that this past week as I’ve been adjusting to an entirely different lifestyle and the financial issues that arise with it.
When you go out on tour, you’re often provided with a per diem on top of your base salary, which is intended to make sure you eat… and with some smaller companies, your per diem may also be part of how you pay for a hotel room.
I’m lucky to have my hotel completely covered, but everyday I get $30 to feed myself. So I started to wonder – can I just live on $30 a day? Can I keep all of my spending down to just my per diem and completely bank my salary for the next 5 months?
Well, week 1 has been a success. It has definitely been helpful that it’s been tech week – with the two producing companies on site, I was actually fed dinner a few times. As the stage manager, I also worked through lunch twice and in both cases, one of the producers yelled at me and brought me back a free lunch from where she went to eat.
Nonetheless, that’s still been about 16 meals to account for on $210 without access to a kitchen. We’re also staying right next to a Target this week, which is awesome and dangerous. Colorado Springs is super dry and I lost my lip balm… so, you know, I had to replace it with four new ones. Despite that, my spending for this week came in at $171.97.
It’s been sort of a silly little exercise, but I’ve learned quite a lot from it… even if they’re very obvious lessons, actually doing some of these things for a week have started to make their importance sink in with me.
Scavenge.
Yes, this does make me sound like a raccoon… but, you know what? I don’t think I mind. My wallet sure doesn’t.
Just being aware of the opportunities around you can save you a lot of money. We had a Kraft food table last night before our opening show. At the end of the night, the cast and I destroyed the leftovers. The Tupperware came out. One of the actresses hauled all of the leftover drinks out to our van for us to keep and drink while we’re on the road. We seriously all walked out of these with pretty much our travel day food set. I imagine we may all want to grab a real dinner when we hit the next city – but $30 to buy one meal a day? More than reasonable.
Get up early.
I’ve always rebelled against this piece of wisdom… mostly because I hate mornings. And I love beds. However, between going two hours back, having ridiculous mountains of paperwork and adjusting to life with a roommate have had me up hours before I had to be each morning.
Hotels have free breakfast – who knew? I mean, I knew, but I never get down there early enough to actually take advantage of it. This entire week I not only ate a free breakfast, but was usually able to pocket a container of yogurt for later in the day too.
Interestingly enough, all those people who tell you to eat breakfast because you’ll eat less all day – they’re right too!
So I think I’m well on my way with this challenge. I also realized that I’m pretty sure I can hit all of my savings goals this year by the end of this tour in May if I succeed. MAY! That’s not even half of the year.
I thought you were going to do something like this! And you are. Banking your entire salary, what a great feeling. And if you have weeks like this where you can save up some of your per diem, you can loosen the purse strings a little more in other weeks without worrying about it.
I totally do mini-challenges with myself. Lots of weeks I’ll get to Wednesday and think “can I make it through the next three days with only $10” or “can I not buy anything but coffee until Saturday” or whatever. Sometimes this requires some weird pantry meals but I often do make it 🙂
C@thesingledollar recently posted…How I Manage My Money Anxiety
Yeah, I think I like the challenging myself aspect – it makes it seem more like a game and less like an unpleasant task.
Great thoughts. It sounds like you are learning to adjust to your road situation well and taking advantage of your per diem amount. I hope you can continue on this positive trend. Will you keep us updated on how this goes?
Kayla @ Everything Finance recently posted…3 Ideas for Growing Your Income
I hope so too! And definitely!
Sounds like a fun personal challenge! AND to meet your savings goal for the year by May would be incredible!!!
My husband gets per diem when he goes on TDYs (military talk for business trip/mini-deployment). In the past it is usually $30-$35/day. He typically tries to average spending half of it, so we can put the rest towards our financial goals. He is typically on a military installation, so not too many temptations for extra spending. He does things like pick up fruit, yogurt, pastries at the grocery store and keep them in his hotel for breakfast. He also picks up sandwich making supplies for lunches. Sure beats the fast food/restaurant prices…
Best wishes to you on meeting your challenge! 🙂
Nichole @Budget Loving Military Wife recently posted…Crazy 8 Semi-Annual Clearance Sale + FREE SHIPPING FRIDAY
Wow! 5 months on tour? How often do you get a break and return home? There’s so much that simple consumers of the arts have no clue about how these productions actually work. Interesting. I have a lot of little challenges this year. Mostly around the blog and generating income. I’ll start with ads and PVs. Who knew if you focused on increasing page views, these pennies add up faster. (I guess quite a few people already knew that). March is my 1st PV milestone goal. I feel pretty confident about hitting that.
Toni @ Debt Free Divas recently posted…Creative Twist on Debt Freedom Revisited
Good luck! Increasing page views just felt so complicated to me. I kind of gave up no strategies and now I just write and whatever happens happens.
This sounds like a good idea! I love challenges, but can get bored easily. I will have to come up with something, like buy groceries and gas with my tutoring money each week.
Alexandra @ Real Simple Finances recently posted…When do you work?
That’s a great one!
I love this! What a great idea and I bet it feels good saving all that money ! Smart!