Wife Swap Casting Call for Frugal Families

ABC’s Casting Call

Because of the current state of the economy, we would like to feature a family that values simple living or chooses to live a frugal and simplistic lifestyle on the show. We would especially love to cast a family that has really unique ways to save money.

We are looking for a two parent home (you don’t have to be married) that has children between the ages of 7 and 17 living at home full time. The family can have younger and older children as well — as long as they have one child between our age ranges.

This is a very unique experience that can be life changing for everyone. In addition, each family that tapes an episode of Wife Swap receives a $20,000 honorarium for their time. Anyone who refers a family that appears on our program receives $1000 as a “thank you” from us. Please feel free to forward this email on to anyone that you feel might be interested.

In case you are unfamiliar with the show, the premise of Wife Swap is to take two different families and have the moms switch place to experience how another family lives. Half of the week, Mom lives the life of the family she is staying with. Then she introduces a “rule change” where she implements rules and activities that her family has. It’s a positive experience for people to not only learn but teach about other families and other ways of life.

Wife Swap airs Friday nights on ABC at 8pm (the family hour)!

As you may have noticed I have not been updating the blog with a day by day blow of what is going on.  One reason is that I became very busy with a number of work related activities, the other reason was that I figured you would not be interested in seeing how I spent $0.00 dollars every day.  Well luckily the end of the month has come and I have run “end of month” processing on how I did and how the Avg Person has done.

Let’s take a look at the graphs:

First is the amount spent per day by each person.

The other will be the amount spent for the entire month per person.

As you can see I am doing a little better than the Avg. Person.

So originally I was asking my wife, my friends and my family for the amounts they spent per day.  In fact my wife was recording what she spent every day.  This quickly became a lot of work for her and was not returning much value.  The bad part was she was not really an Average Person based on the numbers you can see.  Instead of asking one of my friends to keep up with all of that information I wrote a Random number generator that now provides me a number per day that is spent on food.  I know this isn’t 100% accurate, but there is no real average person when it comes to spending. 

Here are the ranges I am using right now, let me know if you think I should change them.

Weekly Range

• Min – $4.50
• Max – $15.00

Weekend Range

• Min – $1.50
• Max – $25.00

The weekend can go either way with spending.  Days like today where I stay in and rest keep the spending to a minimum.  On this day I didn’t spend any money going out, but my wife did buy us a Sunday paper.  This paper cost me $2.00, but will hopefully save much more than that with coupons.  I might try to see if it does work out.

As you can see the graph shows that the normal group of people I am following is not that much more per day, but if you add that up over time we might see that turns out to be a lot of money.

 

The weekends tend to be tougher because you are out and doing activities.  We were out all morning and afternoon this Saturday so when my wife became hungry at around 1:30PM we stopped for something to eat.  I could have made it without eating until we got home a few hours later, but I thought it was better to show that this project is not about becoming unhealthy and more about trying to think ahead and get good prices on items.

The thing I learned from today was to plan ahead and to save money I could have packed some items to eat during the day.  As I said earlier, food will be the biggest cost you have for personal costs unless you really like to other items.

You can see from the graphs today that I enjoyed my afternoon with a mean at Taco Bell for $1.99.  See I am only human too and feel the need to spend money sometimes too.

To give everyone an idea of what a normal (average) person would look like I am adding those numbers to a chart.  I am asking people around me what they are spending and putting those numbers together so you can see what a person might spend on regular days.  These numbers are probably still a little lower than a person that spends on a regular basis because the people around me do a good job about not spending a lot.

The graph shows that breakfast, lunches, and dinners will hurt you in the way we are keeping track of spending.

Luckily I have had two good days in a row.  This is the second day in a row I was able to spend nothing.  I went into the office today, but I brought my lunch so I didn’t have to spend on anything else.  I hope you are doing as well as I am.  Based on the numbers so far are you up to trying to be cheaper than me?

Let’s take a look at the charts.

Just checking in today with an update at lunch.  Bringing your own lunch to the office can save you big bucks, but you have to make sure that it really is saving money.  Let’s take today’s example.

The work crew are going out to lunch, total cost of lunch for one cheap person might be around $5-9.  Let’s take a look at what this might be.

• Salad or Sandwich – $5.25
• Water – Free $0
• Tip – $1.75

Eating Out Grand Total : $7 + tax

Now compare that to what you can get that the grocery store.  You have to be fair so if you don’t eat something at home that counts against the cost of the entire group of items.  For instance if you have to throw away 4 pieces of bread, the cost of the pieces that you eat increases.  I know it isn’t a lot, but it does cost and if you are trying to be cheap every part of a penny counts.

So let’s look at what I am eating today, which in comparison costs probably a little less.  I don’t have the receipt from the grocery store so I don’t know exact on everything, but you will get the idea. This also assumes I will eat everything in the lunch today, which almost never happens.  I am not 100% sure on the prices, but I am guess based on what I remember, moving forward I will keep better track.

• Fruit Cocktail on sale at Kroger with card – $0.50
• Apple – $0.40
• 3 cookies (entire pack of 32 on sale for $1.50) – $0.15
• 1 pack Trailmix (large pack purchased at costco ~9.99) – $0.50
• 1 pack Cheetos (large pack purchased at costco ~ $7.99) – $0.20
• Sandwich (2 pieces of bread, 1 slice of turkey, mayo)
  • Bread (2 loafs ~20 slices per pack for $1.00) – $0.10
  • Turkey (10 slices per pack $1.50) – $0.15
  • Mayo (no clue on cost maybe $2.00) – $0.10
• Pudding pack (yum) – Free 4 pack with purchase of other required item

Packed Lunch Grand Total: $2.10 with tax 

Today was Day 1 and I am sure you want to know how you did.  Let’s get right to it, if you spent money today you are now NOT cheaper than Brendon.  I spent nothing today, I worked from home and ate things that we already had at the house. If you don’t remember our Guidelines check them out here. Let’s see how we did in graph and picture format.

 

As you can see, you will have a lot to live up to in order to be cheaper than Brendon.  Today was a very cheap day and I do spend money just like everyone else so I will keep you posted.

Ok so I bet you are looking on how to figure out if you are cheaper.  It all starts today with a baseline of all of us starting at zero.  I need a way to let you know if you really are cheaper than me and the best way I figured out to try to do that is build a Daily Spend sheet.  From this Daily Spend sheet I can create a chart of what I spend on and more importantly a trend of how I am doing.  If you want to keep up, I am using Microsoft Excel and you just have to keep up with what you spent on and a category to put them in.  Because I am sure I will spend a lot less than you I have not pre planned the categories that I will need to put them in.  We can guess lunch money will be the biggest.  The only other area that I spend money on a good bit is my wife.  If she wants something or even if she doesn’t but i think she would like it, I sometimes spend on her (not a lot but some)

Once we start to see the charts and trends I will show the trends over time and let you compare how you are doing. I don’t have a plan for how frequently these charts and trends will come out, but the more I hear from people I am sure the more they will come out.