Spending money challenge!

The last few months, my hubby and I noticed our credit card bills were getting out of control. We pay them off each month, but the amounts to pay were creeping up higher and higher . . . So, on our last date night (a Mystery Shop of course!) we created a new challenge. Until December, we are limiting ourselves to $50 a week (or $200 a month) each for spending. That's a bit high, so we may lower it to $25 in the next few months, but for now it's $50. That is for anything we want - clothing or fun stuff for the kids or ourselves, restaurants, scrapbooking supplies, tools, etc. Basically everything except groceries and gas. We decided to go to the bank that night and withdrawl $240 (we had $60 on hand) for the remaining three weeks of August. Now for the fun part:

Whoever has the most money left at the end of the month, gets $25 of the other person's money. That can be saved for later, used for something unnecessary, or whatever, but it can't count towards the next month's $200 - we start fresh each month.

It's going to be a lot of fun to try to out do each other and I think it will really help us curb spending. We are also going to track everything we do spend our money on - which I do already in a little notebook by my computer - to will help keep us honest.

Our other goal is to keep groceries at $400 a month. I think I can do it for $300, but DH thinks we should keep more in that category in case there is a killer deal out there (like the Walgreen's diapers last month).

Fun ways to budget and save money! Feel free to join in with your own challenge - I'll post our totals at the end of the month!