A year long money challenge

 I love a good challenge, it seems to keep me focused. One that I entered into twelve months ago was to put aside one dollar each week and two dollars the following and so on. I think some bright spark said that it would add up to almost $1200 if it was kept up.

Me, being me thought I would do it twice, one adding up and the other going down. $1 to $52 and $52 down to $1. I drew up boxes in my diary so that I could cross them off as I put the money into the money box. I bought quite a large one that didnt have a stopper so that I was not tempted to help myself tt it at times.

Having the actual cash in hand became difficult so I arranged for $106 to go directly into my saving account from my pay, as I couldn't keep it up. That was good and I did not take anything from there all year.

This morning I decided to see how much money was in the money box as I had continued to put coins in it when I had some and thought about it. The only way in was to cut it, a tin opener didnt work but a sharp knife and a block to knock it in did.

Look at all that lovely money, even some notes, I must have been flush that day.

I counted it all and there was $322 altogether. 

Warren came in and saw what I was doing and remarked that it was from the shell, he was gifted an expended artillery shell years ago as a leaving present and we have always used just thrown loose change in there, sometimes it would be used to get some coin. 

We decided that we might as well count and cash in the shell money as well. Only once had it ever been full although we had cashed it in usually when we moved houses as we didnt want to carry such a heavy thing with us.

Inside we found a piece of paper which stated $397.85 when full it was dated 13 Dec, the last time it was emptied. The shell was about half full and had $122.85, lots of five cent pieces and no notes.

Warren had to go out this afternoon so he offered to take it to the bank although we are keeping out some two and one dollar coins for our trip, often they are needed for different machines and they can be hard to come by.

My new challenge for the new year will be to try to travel for $800 or less a week and keep the food bill under $100 for the week. Both I think will be a challenge but I will see how many weeks I can achieve it.