Budgeting with a debit card

The French debit card is called A Carte Bleue, or a Blue Card in my world. This Blue Card apparently goes into overdraft, as I can spend money without having money in my account and it is definitely not a credit card, even though it says Visa on the card. It's kind of a hybrid I guess. I don't really understand it.

All I know is that I can finally spend money that I don't have again- like a true North American.

I cracked today and bought 11 euros worth of groceries today.

This morning I had so little food that I sauteed a clove of garlic, a bit of red onion, added 1/4 a cup of chickpeas, cracked an egg in the mix and dumped some leftover curry sauce on it.

Maybe I should start a cheap food blog??

I feel really great when I budget and save and force myself to eat what is actually in my fridge before buying new things. It is really hard to do that, unfortunately, once you are not forced to. Temptation is just too great.

So I am going to try really hard to live to a 20 euro a week food budget, not including 4 lunches a week that I eat at school. I think that's pretty hard since I love to cook and eat a lot of fresh vegetables. It would be easier with a big freezer so I could buy frozen veggies, but that isn't an option. Making coffee in the morning makes a huge difference! Coffee is 30 cents from the machine and I usually get at least 2 a day so it adds up to 7 euro a week, which is technically almost half my food budget. So a big difference indeed!

I think my normal food budget for school in Canada is more like 50$ a week, not included coffees, brunches, etc.,, so this is quite a change.

But I also think its important to start budgeting NOW when I am young so it becomes a habit and I won't go into debt later when it matters.

So on that note, I tried to purchase 11 euros of cheap, filling, healthy food that will last. Things like big cans of beans.

I only get 750 a month after taxes and I want to save some money so I'm not totally broke when I go home, and I also want to travel, so I'm going to try really hard to stick to this budget. One of my favourite blogs should help :http://cheaphealthygood.blogspot.com