Emily

No Spending Month: Week 2

Week 2 (and a halfish) of our No Spending Month is under our belts. The second week was a little bit tougher in terms of resisting spending – catalogs came in the mail and suddenly I felt like a room needed a pillow or accent table update. But I really think this challenge has been good for us. Normally, I’d just take what we have in the house envelope and go buy something that we don’t need – but this week we just refreshed a couple rooms by moving things around and working with what we have. On weekdays that B doesn’t remember to take his lunch, he always runs out to grab something – I’ve been packaging leftovers into smaller containers so that he can take a lunch serving with him every morning so that he’s not in that situation. Here are the things I’m noticing during no spending month, so far:

  • We’re playing more at home. Normally when the kids wake up on a day when we have nothing planned, I add a couple errands to the day. Anything to not be cooped up inside all day long, right? But since spending is out, we either head to a park (though cold, extremely windy days have kept that to a minimum) or our local rec center where we can play for free. We’ve made more play dates with friends, because they’re free, and we’re spending a lot more time together playing in the mornings than rushing out the door to get things done.
  • Meal planning. I’ve always said that the single key to keeping our grocery budget in line is planning out meals, and I’m not always very good about it. In honesty, there are few chores I like less than meal planning. But planning out our meals has made this possible. Where I need to improve? Planning for lunches and breakfasts. That’s my goal for the final two weeks of January.
  • No fast food. I’m not the worst about fast food, but the convenience (and deliciousness) of Chik Fil A suckers me in a few times a month after I pick T up at school – or when we just need to get out of the house for the love… Instead, we’re eating lunch at home, B’s taking leftovers for lunch to work
  • To go along with that, we’re eating more healthfully. I just went to the grocery store yesterday for the first time to get a few convenience snack foods – namely crackers to send with cheese and meat for T’s snacks at lunch. But otherwise, snacks have been fruit out of the fruit bowl.

I know that budget posts are interesting, but let’s be honest – without real numbers, it’s kind of hard to gauge. I’m always hesitant to talk numbers – cost of living varies SO much from region to region (Colorado is considered medium cost of living, generally, I think – higher than some, lower than some) and what is living frugally to some families might be extravagant to others – or some people might think we’re just not feeding our family this month. Keep in mind, this does not account for our bills we pay directly, gas which we just charge to the credit card, etc – this is just our cash spending. But here goes:

We’ve got two more weeks to go in January, and so far we’ve spent $200 total out of our cash budget this month. We’ve pretty much kept our spending to just groceries and gifts – we have a good amount of winter birthdays to plan for so our gift spending is more in the first few months of the year. I’d estimate that we’ve spent $70 a week on groceries (working with what we had – frozen meat, a couple frozen meals we were ignoring in the bottom of the freezer, etc going into January helped that a lot so I expect that to be a bit higher in the next two weeks) out of that $200. On top of the $200 total for cash budgeting, we spent an unexpected $200 when B’s car wouldn’t start during a cold snap at the beginning of the month and we had to get that taken care of so he would have a reliable car to get to and from work. Even with that unexpected car repair, we think we’re doing really well. We normally budget closer to $1250 a month for cash spending (I did a budget breakdown here, but our spending has increased in those two years) on top of our set bills and expenses, so we’re looking to save a lot this month. We have a couple more January birthdays to account for, two more weeks of groceries, and Nell will need more diapers before month’s end. I think I can handle all of that for under $300. Even with the unexpected car repair, that would bring us under what I originally set aside for our “no spending month”. B told me last night, “This no spending thing is pretty awesome. I love not constantly spending money.” Me too, and it was just the wake up call we needed about how unnecessary some of our spending has been.

So that’s the update, hope you’ve all had great weeks and are looking forward to a fun weekend.


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