Shopping vs Saving

This past year has been a year of ups and downs. We had been caught up in credit card debt when Keith lost his extended health benefits at work so had been using it for my treatments but finally stopped that. In the spring we had finally managed to pay off all our debt. Not a penny was owed. But it really emptied out our savings etc. Then Keith got hurt at work and has been off since the fall. Although he is getting Compensation it isn't the same amount as his wage so belt tightening came into effect. Then just before Christmas we got hit with a $2000.00 bill thanks to the RCMP and ICBC which put us in the hole.

So after much discussion between us and after reading a post from one of my sons of an article he had found somewhere we have decided to not buy a single new thing for one year other then groceries and gas for the car obviously. The only item of new in regards to clothing is underwear.

Which means no eating out.
No movie night out
No "let's go check this out"

The only exception to the rule will be our grandchildrens' birthdays.This will be in effect until the end of this year at Christmas.

This will by far the hardest thing we will have to do since we said goodbye to our children when they have moved away. But we took our TV away for an entire year when our children were younger and we all survived then I am sure we will survive again.

Our thinking is Keith is 57 years old, we no longer have anything in our savings for retirement, if we get hit with another emergency we will be in trouble. So it will be a year of gritting our teeth, of being the bad guy when one of us wants something and will be interesting to say the least.

Wish us luck :)I want to check out the Surrey area and see if anyone else is doing this so we can do a support group