No-spend September Updates 4 and 5

September 19, 2016

This was another spendy weekend for No-spend September.

Tracy had an antique fair which I attended with my mom.  I only bought one thing. It was $32.  Because it was an antique fair, and generally not available, I felt it was okay to attend. I bought a vintage credit register. I’m going to use it in my kitchen to hold pictures and recipes. 

The next day, I attended the Harvest Festival with my mom and sister.  I only bought one non-food item. It was an old Gone with the Wind movie cell. It’s for my mom for Christmas. It cost $90, and my dad is actually going to pay for it.  Both The Husband and I agree that gift buying is an exception to our No-spend rules. Other than that, I only bought food items. I bought 5 different loaves of breakfast breads. (The Kids are sick of only having cereal, toast, and fruit for breakfast, so I wanted to get them something different.) The breads were $4 each, leaving me $178.04. I also bought 11 different crock-pot spice mixes which will be great since our kitchen is still under major construction. Those were $4 each and well worth the money. (They are delicious! I bought them last year and loved them!) 11 times $4 equals $44, so for the rest of the month, we are down to $134.04.

There are only 10 days left in the month so that’s not too bad.  We do need another Costco trip. We need bread, milk, sliced cheese, and some fruits and vegetables.  I also need to buy meat.  We have chicken but I need to buy a pork loin (and have The Husband butcher it), a couple roasts, and a brisket. I will get the meat at both Costco and Winco. Also at Winco I need to buy instant mashed potatoes. By the time I’m done with all of this, I will probably be very close to our $400 budget.  We’ll have to wait and see.

In some ways, I’m ready for September to be over! I want a pedicure so badly… my poor feet are awful. I have lost 3 toe nails since the first weekend in August and now that they are starting to grow back I’m ready to have someone make my feet look pretty! On the flip side, I haven’t missed Starbucks this month.  I won a $5 gift card through The Husband’s insurance last month to Starbucks and I saved it for September. I also had a free drink from using my Starbucks gold card that I saved to use until September.  My best friend also bought me a drink one day because she knows about my No-spend months, so I haven’t had a chance to really miss Starbucks.

As I read personal finance blogs, many of them “bash” No-spend months.  They talk about that because you are paying for things: bills, gas, food, it’s not really a No-spend month or because you buy things, in October, that you ran out of in September, it’s not really a No-spend month. I disagree.  Though I may buy things in October, that I ran out of in September, having a No-spend month forces me to make do. This month, we have run out of liquid hand soap (except we found some later, but it forced me to figure something out) so I used a bar of soap I had.  I also ran out of a hair product I use. I had planned to buy some product in August, but I never got to the store so for the month of September, I have been using some product I have.  It’s not my favorite product, but I have it and it has been sitting under my bathroom sink for over a year.  Now, I’m using it up. I also ran out of soap this week. Instead of going out to buy my favorite shower gel, I opened up another soap we had in the cupboard. I also ran out of lotion this month. I went to the bathroom cabinet to see what I could find. I found a pot of lotion and started using it… and I love it! It was buried in the back of a drawer and I don’t even know where it came from, but I pulled it out and started to use it and it’s one of the best lotions I have used in a long time! If it weren’t for a No-spend month I wouldn’t have used products I already had, I would have made a list and gone to Target to buy what was on it (and probably $100 more worth of stuff). So although it’s not technically a No-spend month, it’s forcing me to use what I have on hand; and that is worthwhile!

September 22, 2016

I went shopping last night at Save Mart (I never shop there, it was very expensive so I only bought what I needed) and spent $26.37, that leaves me $107.67 for the rest of the month.  On my way to pick up The Girl from her dance class, I stopped at Save Mart and bought what I would need for tonight’s dinner (which is already in the crock-pot) and some things we needed and weren’t sure when we would be able to get them.

I picked up some pasta sauce, instant mashed potatoes, sliced cheese, biscuits, and bananas just because we needed them.  For tonight’s dinner, I picked up some shredded cheese, a head of lettuce, and some salsa. For dinner tonight, I am making Tex-Mex Chicken. It’s one of the slow cooker meals I purchased over the weekend.

Tonight, I will go to Costco to buy milk, bread, more sliced cheese, lunch meat, and meat (pork loin and 2 roasts). The whole trip will probably run me right around $100, which means I will be right at my goal for the month of September. It will be interesting to see if I can refrain from buying anything else for the rest of the month.

Remodeling the kitchen has made this a very interesting No-spend September.  We have had to be very planned with our food, and for the most part, have done a really good job, but it’s been hard and expensive. For the remaining 8 days of the month, we only $107 to spend to spend on food. Wish us luck!