Spotty Jug Challenge Completed

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Well here we are at week 20 of The Spotty Jug Challenge (also known as The Storecupboard Challenge, but Spotty Jug seems to have stole the limelight!!).

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Back in January I decided we would live off the contents of the store cupboards (of which there are many) and the three freezers we have, supplementing this with a housekeeping allowance of £70 per week for any necessities needed to make up meals. Lovely Hubby was all for it, he was allowed an additional £30 a week for lunches and snacks at work (he works a 10 hour day) on top of this amount. This amount covered everything not just our food so it had to be a realistic figure.

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Our challenge was to save as much as possible to fund our holiday. We had decided that the holiday was to be funded entirely by money from our normal housekeeping, with any other money being 'found' from elsewhere, so that when the time came we did not have to 'flash the plastic' and get into any debt to have ourselves a break from the farm. We have managed to get ourselves completely debt free now and didn't want to dip our toes back into that little game. With a mixture of selling unwantend items on Ebay, which raised enough to pay for the holiday cottage rent, Nectar points which will pay for our holiday groceries and Spotty Jug which is our spending money fund WE HAVE DONE IT!!

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Spotty Jug is proudly rubbing his greedy little belly and giving out THE most enormous burp!!

He contains £822.15.

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That means in the twenty weeks of the Challenge I have only spent an average of £28.90, saving an average of £41.10 per week. Some weeks were very good, remember the 'no spend week', but some weeks I only just crept in under budget. If my hair would stop growing I could live a lot cheaper, LH did offer to cut it for me but I resisted!! Doing the 'Live Below the Line' event the other week really helped the finances, I spent £4.97 and LH's extra food came to only just over £5, he ate things from the freezer and cupboards still, although I had to live within my money completely. The fund was boosted hugely by us having a lodger for three of the weeks, his money went straight into Spotty Jug and was untouched.

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So this Sunday we are off on our holidays, happy in the knowledge that we have not had to put ourselves in debt to do so. We will not be frittering the money away, we have a couple of large purchases in mind....things that we really need, that we would have had to save for and buy anyway and that once we have them will be in almost daily use, what better souvenier of a holiday than a useful essential that you will use and appreciate for a long time to come.

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And to our farm sitters (I know you all read this), fret not, the cupboards are not empty...

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...my latest Approved Foods order arrived yesterday. £128.69 of food for the fantastic price of just £35.10....a bargain. And the basis of my next little housekeeping Challenge!!

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The cupboards might not be empty....but I know someone who is!!

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Sue xx