Readers are placing their bets for how much the BJ’s recipe below for lemon-chicken bowtie pasta costs. I’ve shared one clue – it’s less than $12.
Whoever comes closest to guessing without going over (like the Price is Right) wins a one-year membership to BJs, a warehouse club with 187 locations in 15 states. Membership to BJ’s costs $45. If multiple readers guess correctly the prize goes to whoever answered first.
So far readers have guessed as low as $2.73 and as high as $9.73. Your guess should be for the cost of the entire recipe, which makes four servings, not the price per serving.
The contest ends Monday at 11:59 p.m. PST and the winner will be announced Tuesday. Leave your answer as a comment on this post, on my Facebook page, or on Twitter. One guess per email, please.
Lemon-Chicken Bowtie Pasta, serves 4 at ??? price
8 oz. Barilla® Farfalle
4 Perdue® Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts (1¼ lb.)
5 Green Onions, sliced
1 clove Garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. Wesson® Canola Oil
1/ 8 tsp. McCormick® Cayenne Pepper
1½ cups Progresso® Chicken Broth
2 tsp. Grey Poupon® Dijon Mustard
¼ cup fresh Lemon Juice
White Sauce (see below)
1. Cook pasta until al dente. Drain and set aside. 2. Cut chicken into ¾” pieces. Set aside. Heat oil in large skillet over medium high heat. Add green onions and garlic and sauté one minute. 3. Add chicken and sauté, turning chicken occasionally until cooked through, about 12 to 15 minutes. 4. Add pasta, toss and set aside. 5. Adapt Basic White Sauce recipe (see previous page): mix cayenne pepper into flour before adding. Reduce milk by 1½ cups, substituting same amount of chicken broth. Add chicken broth-milk mix to fl our mix per recipe instructions. 6. While sauce is still hot, whisk in mustard and lemon juice, then immediately pour over chicken-pasta mixture; lightly toss to mix. 7. Garnish with sliced lemon and serve immediately.
BASIC WHITE SAUCE Makes 2 cups. Your microwave’s cooking times may vary. Please watch carefully.
4 Tbsp. Land O’Lakes® Sweet Butter
4 Tbsp. Gold Medal® All-Purpose Flour
2 cups Milk
Salt and Black Pepper to taste
1. Melt butter on high in 1-qt., microwave-safe
bowl, about 20 to 30 seconds. 2. Stir in flour, using spoon to break up lumps, until smoothly blended. 3. Add milk, salt and pepper and stir until completely blended. 4. Microwave on high, pausing to stir every 30 seconds or so, until sauce is thick and bubbly, about 1 to 2 minutes. Variation: Add 2 cups of shredded Cracker Barrel® Sharp Cheddar Cheese and toss with cooked elbow macaroni for mac and cheese.
Speaking of buying groceries on a budget, here are seven recipes that serve four people for less than $12 per dish courtesy of BJ’s, a warehouse club on the East Coast. (If you are not near a BJ’s, check out my tips for getting Costco deals without paying for the membership.)
Guess how much each the recipe for Lemon-Chicken Bowtie Pasta costs and the person who comes closest will win a free one-year membership to BJs, valued at $45. Leave your answer as a comment on this post, on my Facebook page, or on Twitter. One guess per email, please.
The giveaway will work a bit like “The Price Is Right.” The reader whose guess comes closest to the amount without going over wins. If multiple readers guess correctly the prize goes to whoever answered first.
BJ’s has 187 locations in 15 states. Find a BJ’s near you.
Lemon-Chicken Bowtie Pasta, serves 4 at ??? price – guess for a chance to win a $45 BJ’s membership
8 oz. Barilla® Farfalle
4 Perdue® Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts (1¼ lb.)
5 Green Onions, sliced
1 clove Garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. Wesson® Canola Oil
1/ 8 tsp. McCormick® Cayenne Pepper
1½ cups Progresso® Chicken Broth
2 tsp. Grey Poupon® Dijon Mustard
¼ cup fresh Lemon Juice
White Sauce (see below)
1. Cook pasta until al dente. Drain and set aside. 2. Cut chicken
into ¾” pieces. Set aside. Heat oil in large skillet over medium high
heat. Add green onions and garlic and sauté one minute.
3. Add chicken and sauté, turning chicken occasionally until
cooked through, about 12 to 15 minutes. 4. Add pasta, toss
and set aside. 5. Adapt Basic White Sauce recipe (see previous
page): mix cayenne pepper into flour before adding. Reduce
milk by 1½ cups, substituting same amount of chicken broth.
Add chicken broth-milk mix to fl our mix per recipe instructions.
6. While sauce is still hot, whisk in mustard and lemon juice,
then immediately pour over chicken-pasta mixture; lightly toss
to mix. 7. Garnish with sliced lemon and serve immediately.
BASIC WHITE SAUCE Makes 2 cups.
Your microwave’s cooking times may vary.
Please watch carefully.
4 Tbsp. Land O’Lakes® Sweet Butter
4 Tbsp. Gold Medal® All-Purpose Flour
2 cups Milk
Salt and Black Pepper to taste
1. Melt butter on high in 1-qt., microwave-safe
bowl, about 20 to 30 seconds. 2. Stir in fl our,
using spoon to break up lumps, until smoothly
blended. 3. Add milk, salt and pepper and stir
until completely blended. 4. Microwave on high,
pausing to stir every 30 seconds or so, until sauce
is thick and bubbly, about 1 to 2 minutes.
Variation: Add 2 cups of shredded Cracker Barrel®
Sharp Cheddar Cheese and toss with cooked elbow
macaroni for mac and cheese. See pasta recipes
for more variations.
For six more recipes that feed four for less than $12, keep reading.
Charkrem/Flickr
Who has the biggest spending regret of them all? Reader Vikki fell prey to a pair of too-small shoes, which I completely sympathize with.
Have you ever loved a pair of shoes and just knew you had to have them?! I recently bought a pair I had been eyeing for some time. Unfortunately, they didn’t have my size at that time. Knowing I couldn’t wait any longer to have them and afraid they would be gone, I went ahead and bought them a half size smaller than I normally wear! Needless to say, after one wearing, I realize I can’t wear them again but they sure look pretty sitting on the floor!! I should have waited…
I’ve put my size 10 feet through this ordeal, unfortunately. Once, however, I successfully stretched out a pair of size 9 leather walking boots over three painful months. Now they fit like a glove!
Vikki wins a hot pink BargainBabe.com T-shirt for sharing her spending regret. This contest started with my decision to single out one purchase on my credit card bill each month that I regretted. I hope that reviewing my bill with a critical eye will reduce my credit card spending and help me stay on budget. Unfortunately, I can’t return the item – it cost me $8.10 in shipping but was otherwise “free!”
This post is brought to you by CouponCactus.com, a great source of online coupon codes for taxes, groceries, and more.
My spending has gone crazy over the past few months. A new set of gears for my bike ($90), yards of brown suede for new curtains ($88), two new outfits for a trip to NYC ($152), and a pricey sushi lunch ($34).
Sure, I have reasons behind each purchase (I’m doing a race in May that requires additional gears, buying fabric is cheaper than buying curtains, I had a gift card and a rare coupon for the clothing store, and I hadn’t seen my friend in months), but this kind of spending is not sustainable.
My credit card bill, which I pay off in full each month, has risen on average by a few hundred dollars. Not good. Here are two things I’m doing to shift my habits downward.
1. I only buy groceries on Wednesday. I started this two weeks ago and it has made me more aware of how much money I’m spending on food because it is easier to remember my total purchases from one day. Two weeks ago I spent $92 at Trader Joe’s, which included many staple items, beer, and wine. Last week I spent $27 on groceries. My target weekly grocery spending is $25.
Toward the end of the cycle I challenge myself to create tasty meals with what is left and finish off the last vegetables before they go bad. There is a lot you can do with beans, onions, and garlic!
2. I single out an item on my credit card statement that I didn’t have to buy. This month the dubious honor goes to an $8.10 purchase at Stamps.com. I got sucked into their $100 offer for newbies: sign up and get a $5 supplies kit, $45 in free postage (which is strung out over four months), and a free $50 postage scale (which actually sells for about $20 and is useless after my 30-day trial period unless I join Stamps.com for $16 a month).
I don’t buy enough business postage to make it worthwhile to join Stamps.com for $16 a month. So when I read the fine print the $100 sign-up package evaporated into nothing. At that point, I had already spent $8.10 to get the “free” scale mailed to me. Blerg!
I wish I had been more skeptical of the $100 intro offer, which really was too good to be true. Being greedy cost me $8.10.
What do you wish you hadn’t bought in the past month? Leave a comment and the reader with the best story wins a hot pink BargainBabe.com T-shirt, above. There are only about a dozen left!
Just got some interesting economic factoids from the website BillShrink.com. Are you part of the savings trend?
- 46% of credit card holders paid their bill in full each month in Feb. 2009
- 59% of credit card holders paid their bill in full each month in Feb. 2010
- The average American family had $2,000 in unexpected expenses last year
- Americans have reduced their debt by $101.2 billion in the past 14 months ($1,874 per household)
- We are currently saving at record rates, setting a 15-year high (Check out BillShrink’s super cool graphic about American’s personal savings and debt, which goes back to 1960).
- We still over pay for lots of stuff, including ATM fees, credit card late fees, and dealership auto maintenance (though I’m seeing coupons from dealers these days)
To get this data BillShrink surveyed 154,000 users on its site from February 2009-January 2010. The pay off rate has been steadily increasing each month, according to the responses below.
Yes, I pay off balance each month No, I don’t pay off balance each month
02-09 46.03% 53.97%
03-09 45.92% 54.08%
04-09 41.75% 58.25%
05-09 43.19% 56.81%
06-09 46.28% 53.72%
07-09 46.92% 53.08%
08-09 48.72% 51.28%
09-09 51.21% 48.79%
10-09 51.99% 48.01%
11-09 54.73% 45.27%
12-09 57.25% 42.75%
01-10 58.63% 41.37%
I’m curious how BargainBabe.com readers compare to the national average.
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I talked to Laura Rowley, author of “Money and Happiness”
1. “Female” versions of products are often more expensive. Consumer Reports did a study and found that products with his/her versions, like shaving cream, deodorant, and razors, perform the same but cost $1-2 more for the version targeting women, Laura said. All that pink packaging is cute, but not worth an extra dime.
2. A coupon toolbar saves time. Research shows more people do at least two online searches before they buy. First to find the product and then to find coupons for the product. Laura likes the coupon toolbar at Dealio.com, which automatically finds coupons when you search for products on Yahoo, Bing, or Google. Having a toolbar helps you get more value out of a single search.
3. Certain debit cards earn cash rebates. Laura says she earns 3-4 percent on the account tied to her debit card. To earn this high interest rate, you generally have to do five things. One, swipe your debit card 10-12 times a month. Two, set up direct deposit into the account. Three, use the bank’s online banking program. Four, get statements by email not snail mail. Five, bank locally. You aren’t going to see any of the major banks offering this perk.
But do the benefits of using a high-interest debit card surpass credit card perks? “Totally,” Laura said. “It’s way better to get 3-4 percent interest than credit rewards.” What about not building your credit history by using a debit card? “The people with the best credit scores only use 8-10 percent of their credit capacity every month. By using a debit card 10 times, you are getting the best of both worlds.”
Still interested? Go to CheckingFinder.com, plug in your zip code to find a local bank, and compare offers. The banks can afford to give you this interest rate because they are making money on the interchange fee. Every time you swipe your debit card, retailers pay about 2 percent of the sale, Laura said.
This deal works best for people who are comfortable banking online. Laura recommends using a high-interest debit card for small purchases between $10-$50 and a credit card for bigger charges. She makes the most of this deal by transferring 3-4 months of savings into her high-interest account. But only do this if you can stop yourself from spending your savings!
I just checked for my zip code and one bank is offering 4.09 percent interest on balances up to $25,000. That’s a far cry from the 1.25 percent interest rate ING Direct is offering for a 18-month CD.
Jeff Keen/Flickr
This post is for my younger brother and sister, who are both in the early 20s and recently admitted to me that they have no idea how to manage their money. Sigh. The cool thing is that they are both interested in learning how to handle their finances!
Kiddos, I’m starting with the absolute basics so don’t try to get out of this by saying you don’t know how.
1. Figure out how much money you have coming in every month. Do Mom and Dad regularly send you a check? How many hours do you average at your job? What other sources of income do you have? Add up your total monthly income.
If you get paid every two weeks, determine your monthly income with this calculation (simply doubling it is not accurate because most months are longer than 28 days):
Pay every two weeks x 26 = yearly pay/12 months = monthly income
2. Figure out how much money you have going out every month. Grab recent copies of your bill for your cell phone bill, utilities, cable, car insurance, gas, groceries, and anything else that regularly comes up. You don’t need to add this number up – yet. But it’s good to be familiar with your regular expenses.
3. You are ready to download my simple budget, which will walk you through creating a monthly budget. If you did step No. 1 and 2, this will be easy. Grab a pencil, whip out your calculator, and set the timer for 15 minutes. When you are done you will know if you are earning more than you spend or spending more than you earn.
If you are in the black (earning more than you spend), make sure you are saving some money each month. If you are in the red (spending more than you make), figure out what expenses you can cut back on.
Knowledge is power!
Readers who have previously chided my ocassionally crass language, hold back. This post is not intended for minors or the faint at heart.
I couldn’t resist grabbing “Bitches on a Budget” from my patient stack of books waiting for a review. But does the book has as much sass as the title? Yes.
Rosalyn Hoffman opens her 322-page book with this essential question. How do you live a stylish life during the greatest economic downturn of your generation? No matter that the recession is technically over. Budget woes continue. And women rule the pocketbook. Here’s how Chapter 1 starts:
Bitches, we’re going to let you in on a secret: Women might only make $.78 for every $1 men make, but we’re the ones who drive the economy. We’re the ones who decide what to buy and when to buy it. You think we’re kidding? Just turn on the television. It’s talking to you, bitch. And even when it’s not – Rogaine and boner pills – it’s still about you!
Rosalyn gives budgeting a good name (it’s just another way to say edit, really), and attempts to do the same for what seems to be her favorite b-word. She writes about shopping, grooming, staying healthy, mental health, travel, cars, entertainment, entertaining and home decorating, food, and pets in her over-the-top girlfriend no you di-ent hand-waving, finger-snapping voice.
In other words, she makes saving money really entertaining. What more can you ask for?
Comment on this post for a chance to win my review copy. Or, you can pick it up at Amazon for $10.20 (orig. $15).
chiningilles/Flickr
The LA Times recently had a story suggesting 10 simple ways to save. I boiled it down to the best tips and added two of my own. Add yours to the mix!
1. Disconnect your land line. Or find a cheaper plan and call your current provider and ask them to match it.
2. Shop around for home and auto insurance policies. Spend an hour once a year checking if you can get a better price on your home and auto insurance. Do them together so you qualify for a bulk discount. Before you go for the absolute lowest price, check the insurer’s complaint ratio, which will indicate how happy their current customers are.
3. Pay cash (only if you really can’t control your credit spending because you are giving up a lot of perks and cash-back rebates).
4. Adjust your withholdings. The LAT says 70 percent of tax payers get a refund – which means we are letting Uncle Sam keep our money for a year, interest free! Instead, you could be earning interest or paying down debt.
5. Pay off high-interest debt. Focus on paying off your credit cards. It’s hard to get ahead when you’re paying 15-30 percent in interest.
6. Pay into your 401 (k). Making a $100 contribution costs you $70 because of the tax benefits, and if your company matches you are making even more for the same $70.
7. Set up an automatic savings deduction. It will force you to stash cash for a rainy day (which, in Los Angeles, is today).
8. Take care of yourself. Preventive health care really does pay off. Some health plans will reduce your premium if you quit smoking and if you reinvest that money on doctor’s bills and cigarette into your 401 (k), you stand to be $250,000 richer at retirement, the LAT story says.
9. Volunteer. Seeing how others live will no doubt making you feel better about what you have in life.
10. Budget! Check out my simple 15-minute budget. It really does work.
11. Exercise. Going for a walk, run, or bike ride is a cheap activity that can energize you and save you trips to the mall$.
I could be super cheerful and persuade you that this year will be different and that you should take life by the horns, yada yada yada. But I’m not going to. Nothing will change – financially speaking – unless you start to budget.
Life is miserable, eh?
There are as many ways to budget as there are overextended consumers. I’ll share my system in a minute, but first let me warn you that it will take 15 minutes of your time. Can you spare a quarter hour for financial solvency?
Here’s the deal. Most budgets look backwards. You pull out your bills and receipts from the past month and add up what you spent. That number is supposed to indicate how much you will spend next month, right? Wrong!
A better budget looks forward. And my budgeting system only takes 15 minutes to set up. Click here to get my three-page budget. Then click on “Bargain_Babes_15_minute_Budget” in small font to download the zip file.
If you like what you see, sign up for my daily or weekly email list for more savvy-spending tips.
Dru Bloomfield/Flickr
I’m taking another luxuriously long weekend to ring in the New Year. Don’t you wish these four-day weekends came around more often?
Next week I’ll be sharing a special download so you can use my 15-minute easy peasy budget to start the year off right. Seriously. Get your finances under control in 15 minutes.
God, I sound like an infomercial. But it’s true!
Also coming up in 2010: expect a week of amazing giveaways to celebrate BargainBabe.com’s one-year anniversary in January. Thanks to all my wonderful readers for helping me come a long way.
See you in 2010!
~ Julia
aka Bargain Babe
If you are not convinced that saving is the best path to financial prosperity, TheSmartestWay to Save: Why You Can’t Hang on to Money and What to Do About It wants to convince you. The 205-page book persuades with facts, quotes, and lessons that are down-to-earth and basic. Following all their advice is the hard part.
TheSmartestWay has 23 chapters broken into three sections: your money and you; your money and others; and your money and the world. The book starts with the basics of why credit card debt is bad, how to develop spending and saving discipline and asks 19 questions to gauge your current spending savvy.
It offers advice on creating money harmony at home, including showing the other person they are more important than money, getting consent for major purchases, and being honest about money.
TheSmartestWay also has tips on bargain shopping, where to find good deals, and shares a list of 10 questions you should ask yourself before you try on a piece of clothing. They are so useful I’m sharing them here.
1. Do I really need this item?
2. Is it priced well for the value?
3. Can I afford the expense right now?
4. Would I wear it lots of places often?
5. Is it the right size?
6. Does it fit the image I’m trying to project?
7. Does it coordinate with my other clothes?
8. Is it made well enough to last several years?
9. Would I wear it several years from now?
10. Would I regret not buying it?
I recommend this book if you lack motivation but want to start budgeting or spending less. TheSmartestWay covers a lot of ground but is not overly technical. Amazon sells it for $13.25.
Leave a comment on this post by Friday for a chance to win my review copy!
How would you describe your relationship with your money? I fight with mine, but he never seems to agree with me. Then I ignore him until we both simmer down. Not very healthy. I recently talked to Morgana Rae, a money coach who writes Abundance and Prosperity, about how to turn my money monster into a money honey.
What is your money philosophy?
The underpinning of what I teach is that we all have these subconscious relationships with money as if money were a person. We are human beings so we relate to everything as if it was a human being. Our dogs, our cats, our boats, our cars, our money.
The money we have is very judgmental, sort of a tease and then it leaves us high and dry. It’s as if it’s our fault. The formula for especially women is you have to work so hard for so much and you have to do all the work in the relationship and he’s going to leave you anyway.
No you can’t have this, you can’t have that. It’s like being on a diet. So money becomes this punisher or critic who stresses people out with health care bills and mortgages. If you can change money from this nasty, critical monster who keeps making you work hard for not enough and trade him in for this handsome, romantic, sexy lover who wants to stay with you, you’re going to treat money a little differently.
If you asked your money what he wants he’ll say really nice things. It’s okay to spend money if it’s worth it.
How do we know our money will answer with responsible answers, like you have suggested?
There has to be a level of personal responsibility. There has to be a reality check. There has to be some inner resonance.
What do you mean?
It has to feel true. It really hinges on it being a relationship with another human being. He (money) is not a prince who comes to rescue you. Because then you are the victim.
How can people create a healthy relationship with their money?
I would start by examining all the negative things you’ve heard or seen with money. Find the negative thoughts and turn them into a real bad ass monster that is so intolerable you just want to get rid of him. Then you imagine who would you love so much. This relationship is not based on what he can buy you but on how good a relationship partner you can be to him.
Money likes to be responded to and loved and paid attention to. When money represents all of your failures, your irresponsibility, your guilt for buying that stuff, divorces and breakups and betrayals, people go unconscious. They don’t want to see it. They don’t want to deal with it.
They are running away from their relationship. They are scared of it. The people who most need to pay attention to their money are doing it the least and it’s self fulfilling because the money gets scarier and scarier.
How should we pay attention to our money?
Look at your bank account every week. Write down everything you purchase. There is a consciousness and awareness and decision making that changes you from blithely buying the junk purchases to buying very special nice things with consciousness, awareness, and gratitude that makes you feel good about yourself.
What steps can I take to improve my relationship with my money?
1. Examine your relationship with money. Money is a stand in for everything else. Our choices, our worthiness, our freedom. What are all the things you’ve seen, heard or experienced around money?
2. Make money the bad guy. Get rid of the dynamic of unworthiness and foolishness. You make it so real that you could taste this guy. He makes your skin crawl.
3. Get rid of him.
4. Invent your money honey. You take on the role of the great relationship partner. What do you need from me so you can stay with me?
5. Ask your money what it wants. What do you think of how I am spending you? Do you want this? Do you want me to do that?
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Banks earn more money from debit card fees than credit card fees and they often manipulate usage patterns to maximize their profit – and our pain, says a front page story in today’s NY Times.
“Banks will let you overspend on your debit card in a way that is much, much more expensive than almost any credit card,” said Eric Halperin, director of the Washington office of the Center for Responsible Lending.
The problem is that banks charge you an overdraft fee when you spend more than what is in your account, instead of denying the purchase. Three-quarters of the largest American banks automatically give consumers overdraft coverage, excepting Citigroup and INGDirect.
By calling this service overdraft “protection,” banks emphasize the benefit to consumers (being able to spend more than you have), while de-emphasizing their gain (charging outrageous fees for lending you what you the moolah).
Regulators and lawmakers are working to help consumers, but in the meantime, ahem, here are seven things you can do to reduce your debit card fees, the story says.
- Call your bank and ask them to turn off the overdraft protection on card transactions. Ask if this step will also disallow checks, ATM withdrawals and automatic bill pays to go through if they take your balance below zero. These are additional ways you can incur fees.
- Create a cushion, be it $100, $500 or $1,000, if your bank does not let you turn off overdraft protection. Some, like Bank of America or Wells Fargo, “generally won’t let you switch” it off, the story says. My Mom used to keep $300 extra in her checking account that was not reflected in the balance on her check ledger. So when she went negative $15, say, she actually had $285 left.
- Find a new bank that allows you to NOT have overdraft coverage. Try a smaller bank or credit union, and be sure to ask more than one person at the new institution to make sure they don’t have overdraft coverage.
- Get a line of credit at your bank that will kick in if you go below zero, instead of overdraft coverage. With a bank line of credit you will pay an interest rate on whatever you borrow beyond zero, instead of a $30 or $35 fee whenever you dip below zero.
- Connect a back up savings account to your checking account. If you overspend, the bank will take money from your savings to make up the difference. PNC Bank’s Virtual Wallet lets you link two accounts to your main account, the story says.
- Set an alert so you know when your balance is getting low.
- Consider a credit card – if you weren’t running away from credit in the first place!
Read the whole story here.
My spending moratorium is over in four days on August 1. Hallelujah!
I told Hubby how well my spending experiment was going and he brought up a great point. You’re not spending anything, he said. “But I’m more in the ‘I can spend’ mindset,” he said.
The possibility that his spending would change during my moratorium had not occurred to me. Once he pointed it out, though, I was nervous that our spending had shifted from the two of us to just him.
Was our total spending in July any less than in past months?
I pulled up our most recent credit card statement, which ended yesterday, and found our total had ballooned to levels not seen since before we started my simple budgeting system.
Uh oh.
What happened? Some of the purchases were in June, before the moratorium started, which I subtracted. Then I subtracted all the business expenses, which were allowed during the moratorium. The total came waaaay down to where it resembled bills from past months.
But Hubby was right. Our credit card bill, which reflects the vast majority of our spending, was about the same. Does this mean I didn’t save any money during the moratorium?
I took a closer look at the bill. Most of the charges were genuinely Hubby’s (a pull up bar from Big 5, a massage, lunch with co-workers) – not him covering for me.
Then I saw it.
A $395 charge from the dentist for a night guard. That expense is paid for by pre-tax dollars we set aside for medical expenses through our Health Savings Account. The money has already been saved. I subtract $395 and our total spending is…REALLY LOW!
In fact, our July spending is less than half of what our lowest credit card bill has been in years. Maybe ever.
I’ve still got four days until I can spend, but so far I’m declaring the moratorium a success!!!
