Things Sarah CAN Buy

Seeing as it's day 2 of the shopping ban, I figured it was about time to add my rules of what I can and cannot buy. This is my list of acceptable items:

Food This falls into the grocery items, not takeout (that will be coming up). Fortunately, living at my parents helps this out a lot. But I still am buying quite a few groceries to make various recipies here and there. But I don't think this is too much of an issue.

Takeout/Eating Out: This one however is. Eric and I get lazy sometimes and will go out to fast food places when we're at home and could very easily make something. Also, a friend Amber brought up a good point about going out to various fast food places vs. saving that money to splurge on a nice new place once a month or so. So I am limited to only eating out/takeout only three times a month. And one of those three times MUST be somewhere new. I have a huge list of places I want to try and somehow seem to push those to the side to just get junk at somewhere old and boring. This is both cutting back financially and also being better about my money (well IMO, since I'm at least experiencing new things). However, if someone wants to take me out for food for free, this doesn't count since I'm not spending ;)

Personal Care Items: The *only* personal care items I can buy would be tampons/pads and that's ONLY if I completely run out. I don't anticipate that happening, but hey, who knows. I have enough of everything on earth to last me for 3 months... maybe even 3 years :p

Birthdays: This is one that I'm kind of torn on... both Eric and my mom's birthday fall into the three month period. I am going to try to give them both "experience" based gifts - like tickets to something or taking them out for dinner versus just buying something. Hell, I can't even remember what I bought for either for their birthdays last year, and I bet they might not be able to either. But I remember when Eric and I went to the Green Bay Packers/Chicago Bears game for christmas a few years back... experiences tend to stick with you whereas material items can be hit or miss.