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I’m doing 30 days of not spending money, and I totally cheated

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Ah Easter, the time of excessive eating and Good Friday house parties. 

Week three of the 30 day No Spending Challenge is underway, and honestly?

I cannot wait to be released from my prison of personal finance.

In case you are wondering why in the name of God anyone would try to survive without two cents to rub together by choice, here's a bit of background.

I am embarking on the 30 Day No Spending Challenge (you can see how I prepared for it here), and I am officially over it. 

The 30 Day No Spending Challenge focuses on benefiting your bank balance by sticking to a tight budget for four weeks. 

Most adventurers into this monetary management challenge stick to a budget of about €50.00 a week, to spend on groceries, transport and socialising, but essentials like rent and utilities are excluded.

After all, it's hard enough to get a house these days without potentially pissing of your landlord by not coughing up that "very reasonable, considering the area," sum of monthly rent. 

€50.00 is definitely a sorry sum to try to get by on for the week, but after you minus my travel expenses, I'm left with €20.00 to spend. 

This week, Easter was looming, and being in possession of an assortment of younger siblings, chocolate had to be purchased to satiate the Lent-mad masses.

The challenge does allow you to put an event or two aside that you have already committed to ahead of the challenge, during which you can allocate yourself a budget to spend during the event outside of your chaste weekly allowance, and Easter was my time to shine.  

 

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I gave myself an egg allowance of sorts, and splashed out on fancy confectionery items for my immediate family, as well as a bottle of gin for myself in preparation for the Good Friday madness. 

In order to minimise my spending, I split the cost of the gin, tonic and limes with a friend. 

It was definitely a spending savvy move, but it did remind me of my late teens, where pocket money would be pooled between friends to purchase a large bottle of blue alco-pop to be consumed with haste in some drizzly field. 

Though the beverage was an expense, my guilt was minimised by the fact that it was a house party rather than a night out, so the expenditure was dramatically lower than it could have been.

While I did not go outside my egg budget, I counted on the Bank of Mum and Dad to get my train ticket back to my home county of Galway for the family festivities. 

I have been in the process of detangling my finances from my parents for a number of years, which is probably the same as most young twenty-somethings, and now all that's left is my phone bill. 

Getting kicked off the family phone plan will truly be the moment the cord gets clamped, but the Bank of Mum and Dad does remain open for occasional necessities like this pilgrimage to Galway.

It is completely cheating on the challenge to allow other people to buy you something, but after splurging on eggs and gin, I couldn't get any more in the red than I already was. 

After the short but sweet visit, I returned to Dublin to be greeted with bare cupboards, a svelte LeapCard balance and limited plan for what I intend to spend my twenty quid on this week. 

I'm sure there's some way to conjure some broken, leftover Easter eggs into three square meals a day, right? 

Oh, and while we have you; don't forget to have your say in the inaugural SHEmazing Awards this May! It's time to vote, and you can do it right here!

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