Frugality muscle exercise routine: mid-January update

Whew. I'm back from our cruise vacation. It was my first time on a cruise and I now believe that cruise vacations are mostly if not completely anti-Mustachian. But that is a topic for later. Today's post is about the frugality muscle exercise routine I laid out for January.

Here's my status, with special thanks to Microsoft Paint:

Fancy, I know.

Red X's are days when I purchased something. Green check marks are days when I didn't purchase anything. And blue X's are days I was on vacation. I'm counting cruise days, and the travel thereto and therefrom, as a subclass of spending days. I wasn't sure how I would count them until I experienced first-hand the sheer magnitude of the consumerism. Believe me when I say I put forth a valiant effort in frugality.

Thursday the 5th we made a last-minute trip to the store for toiletries for vacation. Monday the 16th we went grocery shopping to restock. And the rest of the days, as you can see, I was purchase-free.

That isn't to say I wasn't tempted. This afternoon at work was a perfect example. Some co-workers were planning to walk to a nearby lunch shop where the Wednesday special is a spicy pork bulgogi that I've been interested in trying for the better part of two months. I was tempted. In the end it wasn't even that I couldn't justify the expense. I couldn't justify another day this month where I spent money on something I didn't absolutely need.

I'm feeling pretty good about how this month is coming along. I'm spending-free on 6 out of 18 days, or 6 out of 8 days, or somewhere in between. My gas tank is about half full and with luck I can get through the rest of the month only filling up once. We've got another two grocery trips this month scheduled, one of which can double as my gas purchase day. I'm aiming at two or three more purchase days this month, hopefully no more than four.