Inspired for a Challenge (Or Two or Three)

I find inspiration in all kinds of things. The news, some blogs, and a comment are my sources of inspiration for some challenges I will hold myself to in the coming weeks.

• I was perusing CNN and came across this interesting challenge, How Far Can You Get on $10? Well I aim to find out. Tomorrow I don't have much work (only one short meeting), so I will take my $10 bill and see how far I can stretch it and how many interesting things I can do.
• A personal goal is to walk a marathon and it just so happens that a walking marathon is coming up this Saturday in Vancouver, WA. This should be quite the challenge and it is on my goal list (note the '400 Goals in 400 Days' that I posted about a while back has been downsized to 43 goals that I intend to achieve this year starting last Saturday which was my 43rd birthday..more on this in a later post) so I am hauling my carcass down to Vancouver and will hopefully complete an entire 26 mile walk in one day!
• I received a comment from Young Mogul who pointed out that my no spend week some months ago was really not much of a challenge because I stayed home most of the time and of course, unless you are a dedicated online shopper, you really can get by without spending money if you stay home because there is both no temptation and no place to spend your money. Of course she was right. So...my challenge for the last week of the month (April 25-May 1) is to do a no spend week. This should be a lot more challenging because I have out of town meetings/training sessions four out of seven days that week. And of course the very first place our car pool group stops on the way to these meetings is Starbucks, and of course I have a Starbucks addiction...and so you can imagine how challenging this may be.
• Then I came across some other interesting challenges: a $40 weekly spending/entertainment plan, a one week on $20 challenge, and a post by Betsy at Married With Luggage about a number of people who have challenged themselves to live with just 100 things. The month of May looks like it may encompass all of these things--we should have an offer on our house soon (so says our realtor) which would mean next month will pose a number of challenges: we need to downsize our stuff considerably to fit it into our new place (the 100 thing challenge or thereabouts), and I also intend to keep my spending to between the $20 and $40 per week because I told our lender we would have hubby's credit card paid off before the house closes which means every single penny I can round up will go to that debt.

So stay tuned...this should be an interesting month and a half...