A Zero Dollar Weekend

Have you ever gone one weekend and not spent one dollar? And if so how long ago? Sometimes we tend to “work for the weekend”.

Sometimes we tend to think of the weekend as a small holiday. And our budgeting sense goes right out the door. We take the excitement of these 48 hours too far. And before long our budget takes a severe hammering.

Restaurants, meeting friends, going to the movies, retail therapy, getting DVDs, drinking alcohol, going to the city or going to the country are regularly on everyone’s agendas.

However there is a way to stop this dollar fuelled madness. Plan your weekend during the week. For example three weekends ago Renee and I had one of our Zero dollar weekends.

To start with we went on the internet during the week. We checked out the TV guide and what shows we would watch. On Saturday night we saw that the movies Crocodile Dundee and the Castle were on. Bingo that’s a great cheap night in.

On Friday night we had a DVD that Renee’s Mum had lent us to watch. Great, there goes two of three nights with not a dollar spent. On Sunday night we played Monopoly to fill the time.

During our shopping trip that week we picked up some cheap snacks for over the weekend. This was to stop us running to the store for a treat.

Saturday we spent most of the day cleaning the house. Sure not a fun activity but something that needed to be done and it is free. Sunday we went for a walk and watched a tape of something we had taped during the week.

There, with a little bit of thought we went the whole weekend without a dollar being spent. Just something for everyone to consider once in a while.