The Vicky Challenge. The Pre Emptive Strike.

In an effort to get ahead in as many ways as possible this week I am talking about what I call the pre emptive strike... that is to anticipate what is going to happen next!
Lets face it, mostly, we have things that are patterns and repeats. If you know yours you can plan ahead.
They usually are things like knowing you have a long day coming up and that in all likelihood you will be too exhausted to cook dinner.
Or that you have several birthdays coming up all close together...
That kind of thing.
If we let them go we also know what will happen next i.e.
We will pick take away up on the way home.
We will spend too much on the birthdays as we will run out of time!

So yes we know whats coming and we know what normally happens as a result. The pre emptive strike is to do something while you can about it and change how it turns out. This can be a big sanity saver and money saver.

I truly do so much better if I use my diary, look ahead and plan. It might be the biggest money saver of all.
This week I can see I have two days that will be busy and I will probably be tired. So today I am cooking up a big batch of spaghetti and meat sauce. Tonight we will have that with pasta. While I'm at it I will assemble a lasagne and set some sauce aside for Tacos another night. So I know I will not have to cook those nights and I will have a spare meal in the freezer as well.

Another example is we have a little holiday coming up. We head off to a beach side town. For starters there is 12 hours driving (round trip) and I make sure I have a crochet project ready as I won't want to waste an opportunity to crochet for 12 hours plus while on holidays.
Next I know that on the way we will go past expensive and not very nice road houses and they will be the food choices. A stop at one of these plus two lunches and drinks would be thirty dollars or more. So I plan ahead and pack a picnic and make up rolls and a thermo of tea and one of coffee etc.
It is much nicer and saves a lot of money! It is just planning ahead.

Then while away in a country town the fact is that prices of everything are really high, from milk to anything at all. It is easy to turn an inexpensive holiday into an expensive one just eating. So I have baskets that I add specials to each week and we take our tea, coffee, milk, several meals, treats etc
with us. I know this saves so much money.

So these are my pre emptive strikes!

Then there are the things you can't see coming. They are a whole new ball game except that you can to some extent cater for them by always having spare meals in the freezer and on the pantry shelf. Always having a well stocked pantry. Having first aid and medicines and having a good gift cupboard  with paper and cards on hand. These cover a lot of situations.

What are some of the things that you can see coming or that regularly cause you to overspend? Can you think of ways to head that situation off at the pass and change how it usually turns out?
This can be a big saver. I think of it as a game and a challenge. We cannot predict everything but we can see a lot of things coming and dodge them! I always say if you see a train coming get off the tracks!

Last week was very good for my Vicky Challenge. And to finish up February!

I did a lot of painting, I will say $300 saved.

I made balls of ribbon yarn towards floor rugs I want to make and from free fabric. I looked for this yarn as I wanted to copy something I had seen. I found it at $20 a ball. So far I have made 8 which is $160!

$4 was saved on turkish bread.

I gave Andy a haircut. This locally is $45 which seems ridiculous, most of that must be a search fee!

We had "Fridge Night" I am naming this eat up left overs night Fridge Night as Sue told me the other day that once a week they have Fridge Pie, Fridge Pizza or Fridge Frittata. These means they use up lots of left over bits and pieces into one of these meals. So we had Fridge Pizzas.  I used up left over pesto on one base, let over figs on two, left over cheeses, ham, tomatoes, salami, olives... all kinds of things and got four pizzas all up. They were yum! And guess who has pizza in his lunch box today?
Left overs night or fridge night is a big saver and Sue's version is really good! I will say left over nights and all my pizzas saved $20.
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Due to postage going up and up, especially parcels, I am getting tricky at keeping parcels small and looking for alternatives. I found I could send a parcel with someone going through a town interstate where a friend lives. So I could make my parcel big and heavy as I like! This saved me around $100!

Sue gave me all those tins and baskets. Even at op shop prices these would have cost $100 and I will make so much more of them that that by the time I have finished!

Andy is an Aldi convert! For ages he has wanted and saved for guitar stands and microphones ... he is a music nut and has a whole music room. He also rarely spends money on himself. The Aldi catalogue arrived and it had all this musical stuff so I showed him. He basically didn't believe the prices in that he couldn't see HOW these things were such a fraction of the price he knew was normal.
However he got up early Saturday morning and headed off! He got everything he had been wanting at a fraction of the price. I told him there was no risk as you can retune anything if not happy.
But boy was he happy!
Also he needed two new pairs of glasses. He had it all worked out and the price. I said to him go compare around and online. He did! This little exercise saved $440.
His combined savings with glasses and Aldi were $744!
He still can hardly believe it. I added it up as we went through each thing and he told me what he expected to pay and what he actually paid. Talk about a big week for him!


I used soaps as a gift. Saving $30

This is a whopping $1503 which is the biggest week by miles so far.

I still need to add in my monthly $225 which I save doing my own hair.  I add that in at the end of each month.

So I am amazed by this. And encouraged.

How was your Vicky Challenge? And how could you do the pre emptive strike and save by dodging the predictable blow outs that happen regularly? There is often a pattern to this. At one time Friday nights were a blow out for us. Changing one thing made a big difference in our budget.  It helps so much to think ahead. I know that from what I cook today I have two nights off later in the week and cooking more tonight will be worth it!

Have a great week! Tomorrow is Autumn! I am so happy about that I just love Autumn! xxx