Saturday, April 18, 2009

Friday + Fifty Bucks + Family =

So some of you know that we have been practicing a "cash money only" budget!
Props to us because this is hard work and takes careful planning but we've been doing an ok job at it so far. It definetly makes you more aware of where the money is going! Friday was crazy. Jeff was supposed to work all day/night because they were paving the Guide but because of weather he got off at 3:00pm. We had cancelled our plans with our friends because we anticipated him working late so what do we do? We hit the bank up for $50 anddecided to go for a drive (hoping the kids would fall asleep in the car, but they didn't) down to Mt. Vernon to the Tulip Festival and Street Fair. This was our family shot...I like how no-one is looking at the camera...the sun was in our eyes really. We decided to buy fresh squeezed lemonade which was a whopping $5! Are you kidding...yes we will just have one and we will share it! It was good though and went well with our $4 small kettle corn. We got the snacks at the fair first to keep Braxton content while we drove around looking for the tulips.

The tulips are late this year because of weather but we did see a few and they are really beautiful. I honestly like the dafodils just as much but you can only drag the kids in and out of the car so many times before it's annoying. So we don't have any dafodile pictures. Plus, we went to the walk through gardens but it cost $5 to get in, per person, and that was so not worth it to us....we wanted to stretch that $50 and if we can see the flowers from the road....why would we pay? If we used a debit card....we probably would have without even thinking...BUT....not with our "cash only" budget!



So after the tulips we were hungry and we had $40 to spare. We also concluded that we NEVER go out to dinner with both of our kids. We rarely go to eat in general and since we have so much family around if we do go out we usually use it as a date night. We decided it would be really fun to take the kids to dinner. We asked Brax where he wanted to go and he said Red Robin. He had never been there but Carson had a balloon from there the other day and ever since then Braxton has wanted to go there. So that is what we did and it was really fun having both our kids with us.
With $10 to spare after dinner we went to the Prime Outlets to Carters and got Adelle some new jammies. The Easter Bunny looked for jammies for her because she has outgrown hers but with no luck so we found some for her there.
Not bad what you can do with $50 on a Friday with your family, huh! I thought it was fabulous:)
Oh and by the way I know we didn't have to spend the whole $50 just because that is what we took out, it just worked really nicely to go to the outlets and get pj's since we were in the neighborhood.


6 comments:

Sarahbelle said...

Fun! I think the cash only idea is brilliant, but SO hard to do. I feel like we spend so freely with a debit. Do you do grocery shopping with cash only? Our frugal family outings have been the beach or park lately, and I am trying to find lots of other things the community here has to offer.

Shanna said...

We do a cash only budget as well. It's hard but well worth it. It makes us think twice about buying things...do we "need it" or do we "want it"! Your kids are too cute.

Johnny and Eirian said...

Oh man Andrea i'm so impressed by your day out on a cash budget, I put even $2 items on a credit card out of pure habit! The tulip festival looks beautiful, and since we probably won't make it up this year I thank you for sharing your pictures so I can live it through you!

Peter and Lesha said...

so cute I wanted to go see those too. Love the fam shoot that was great. great budget idea we have tried so many things!

Rachel Ashmore said...

I LOVE tulips. So jealous.

Marcy M Miller said...

Zak and I used to do the only pay with cash thing- it works great, because you really do watch your money so much more. We should really do that again. How fun to see the tulips, they are so pretty.