Life on a Budget

Despite our frugality, towards the end of each month we have to do some pinching. Don't worry, we are NOT suffering. haha. We always eat extremely well, probably too well sometimes. We have a shared food budget for the month, and the last couple weeks usually find us wondering how we are going to make the money stretch. To try to leave enough money for this week's shopping (the last one before pay day!), we got inventive last week. We stash all of our 1 lempiras together, because 1 lemp bills don't buy much unless you have a lot of them. It's just like having a $1 bill, except it's worth a lot less. Think about it, if you were going to buy fast food, would you want to carry in 20 bills with you? That's what it's like with lempiras. Not to mention, where does one hide that many bills? Thus, we save all of them together. We weren't really sure what we were saving them for, but we figured we would figure something out. Last week, we did. I divided them into stacks of tens and took them in my backpack to tutoring. After tutoring, Cia and I went to the market and bought all of our fresh market produce with stacks of ones. Some of the vendors laughed a little, but no one minded :).

Lempira was a native that tried to lead a revolt against Spain. Although the revolt was unsuccessful and ended his life, Lempira is still considered a hero for his brave effort. He is remembered on the 1 Lempira bill, some of the coins, and the very name of the money itself.

Here's the big stash. I separated them with bobby pins for easy access at the market.

Pretty impressive huh? :) That big stack of money is worth about $5 US.