Tenner Week: Day 7: Be entertained
It’s the final day of this Tenner Week, and Day 7 is all about having a good time. When you have almost no money, you can start to feel stressed, or spend lots of time scratching around to save or make as much cash as you can, and this can take over to the exclusion of everything else if you’re not careful. While money management is a sensible way to start tackling a low income, it’s also possible to start losing sight of the nicest things in life at the same time too.
So today, make sure a good chunk of your day is spent doing free/cheap leisure activities that make you feel cheery. It’s entirely up to you and your personal taste but you could:
- Listen to a comedy podcast
- Watch a favourite show on catch-up
- Make a new playlist
- Dance around the house
- Meet up with your funniest mate
- Go to a free event
- Download a free ebook
- Borrow a library book
Don’t pick things you think you should be enjoying, or anything that’s ‘improving’ today. Go for silly things and fun things, and whatever makes you sing along or laugh out loud.
What’s happening here?
Watched 20 minutes of TV yesterday, bringing my total up to 2 hours and 20 minutes. As we’re allowing four hours for the TV diet this time around, I have an hour and 40 minutes left so am fully intending to squander it on some trashy movie tonight, or the like.
I’m also going to try the free iTunes Radio app out today, to see how it performs and if their suggested tracks are interesting choices.
Yesterday’s food was: home made apricot, hazelnut and chocolate loaf plus orange juice for breakfast, herby scrambled egg burritos and home grown rocket salad for lunch, and lovely dinner party food with fish and vegetables for the main meal. I’m really glad I did a menu for the week and made the fruit, nut & choc loaf so there was something nice to have at the weekend.
Today’s menu is: toasted apricot, hazelnut and choc loaf plus orange juice for breakfast, grilled sausages and garden salad for lunch, and scampi with chips, peas and garden vegetables for dinner, plus mixed berries and icecream for dessert.
The kitchen garden has made it so much easier to live on a tight budget but still eat healthily, and I spend less than £1 a week on it in total. A great investment, and very tasty when it’s freshly-picked. Have a look at Golightly Gardens if you’d like to find out more about the budget, and what’s being grown and cooked. Yes, there can be a lot of energy expended on digging, planting, weeding and so on, but it’s good exercise as I reminded myself yesterday.
Managed not to spend any money yesterday, and not going to spend any more today, so that brings in my total spend for the week at £9.54 – a success.
Available now: The ‘How to Live on £10’ ebook
To make your Tenner Week go with a bigger bang, try ‘How to Live on £10 a Week: Take the Tenner Week Challenge’. It includes a real life example of a shopping basket and menu, and plenty of free and cheap ways to keep yourself entertained.
It’s on sale at a low introductory price of £1.53, so please buy a copy while it’s on offer and help support this site. You don’t need to own a Kindle to read this book – there’s free, safe official software you can download to read it on your phone, tablet or computer.
