Live Below The Line Days 4 & 5

belowtheline

Wow, the last week has been absolutely crazy!  On to days 4 and 5 of the Live Below The Line.   My week turned crazy busy so I did not have time to go looking for free fruit/vegetables with the new snapsaves rebates sadly but we still managed.

Over the two days we ate the rest of the pasta with meat/canned veggies in sauce we made (the next night using some cheese to make a pasta bake), some more beans on toast, chicken wit sauce).  On Friday I just could not face the oatmeal again and he was really hungry so he had two packets of Oatmeal and I used some of the potatoes we had prepared the night before for lunch to mash and make a couple of potato pancakes with 1/3 of the beans.

Friday was a crazy day for me and I was so tempted to grab my usual Second Cup smoothie when I finally left the office after 7.  Thankfully I had saved that orange for the last day and ate it on the train which gave me the sugar rush I needed.  I did however give in to my tea addiction and have a cup at a meeting on Friday, we had been in meetings for 4 hours with no breaks and 7 hours since breakfast, I just could not say no.  A cup of Tim Horton’s steeped tea has never tasted so delicious.

We came in under budget for the week with $0.74 left from the grocery budget but because we spent less on the first day we were very close on the daily budgets.  We had some pasta left over too.

I am very happy to say that I have not eaten cheese, oatmeal or beans since last Friday and we have nice bakery bread and not cheap sliced bread (oh Denningers, how I love your potato & onion bread).  While it is easy for us to go back to our normal eating/shopping habits, I really could not imagine being on that budget long term.  Our meals were very limited and far from healthy.  While you would not be stuck on daily budgets as well as weekly ones and could stockpile some items for various weeks and have more choice in meals, it still is very difficult.

We did treat ourselves to dinner out on Saturday, which even at a local family style restaurant cost over double our budget for the week.  A real eye opener seeing the bill for the meal compared to our grocery bill.

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