Cheating

So, I spent my last $3 cash after school yesterday. I bought a 32 oz. caffeine free Diet Coke for me and a 44 oz. Dr. Pepper for the kids to share. Those purchases weren't food, strictly speaking, but I used my grocery money anyway. I know it wasn't the best use of 3 bucks, but Monday's can be rough and we really needed the boost. 
I still have 2 weeks to go and there are a few factors I'm considering as I rifle through my wallet, all but empty except for a bunch of receipts showing me the paper trail of where I've been.  I think I may be breaching the integrity of my experiment, but I'd love to know what you think.

1. Maybe I should take the kids up on their offer and match to our grocery budget what they gave to charity this month.  That would give me another $15.
2. The jar of cash and change that gets collected from the laundry and other instances where kids owe me because they are late could support our soda habit for the duration.
3. A couple of weeks ago I bought a really nice food processor from Costco.  My old one, that I got 14 years ago died after a long useful life, an I figured the new purchase would help me a lot in my food prep.  However, I got it home, started this experiment and never took it out of the box.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I kept thinking I might need the 50 bucks.  It's a bute and I hate to take it back, but if I do and I get the $50 to use on groceries, is that cheating? 

 

Let me know what you think.  In the mean time, I'm grateful to report that I left $30 of grocery money in the bank so I could start the Bountiful Baskets program online, and I should get my first basket on Saturday.  I'm so excited. Also, I'm going to take inventory of what we have on hand and post it here.  Maybe that will help us all make a more informed decision on how to proceed, and whether we need  to "cheat", or not.