No Spend September Updates

9/13

I went to the grocery store last night and I spent more money… totally unexpected and totally unnecessary!

I went to Safeway and I bought “fancy” cheese to make grilled cheese sandwiches. It happened in a funny way. Grilled cheese was our planned meal, but I couldn’t find the cheese The Husband said we had in the freezer. I made an offhand comment that I would just go buy some fancy cheese for fun. Then I opened the fridge to check something else and there was the cheese. The Husband had put it in the fridge to help me out. The Boy heard and asked if I would buy fancy cheese anyway.  What can I say, I’m a sucker!

I went to the store for some nicer cheese (and bananas) and left $16.09 poorer.

We had $39.71 remaining in our grocery budget for the first half of the month. We now have $23.62. I still don’t see us having much we need to buy in the next couple of days. The cheese was a frivolous purchase, but we did use our No Spend September budget to buy it. Of our $400 grocery total, we have $223.62 and we are nearly half way through the month.

My goal for the rest of the month is to NOT buy any more splurges like ribs and cheese and see where our budget takes us. I want to try to only buy our normal purchases.

9/18

Shocking, but we spent more money… I went to the Farmer’s Market and bought pluots, peaches, and grapes to the tune of $8.80. That brings our running total to $15.02 for the first half of the month, or $214.82 total.

Then, yesterday, The Husband decided to make tomato dumplings, a family favorite, but the recipe called for short ribs so he had to go buy those and he bought a few other items at the store. He spent $15.79. We now have just under half of our food budget for the month of September to spend. We have $199.03 left, but we are over half of the way through the month. We shouldn’t need to buy too much more this week but next week we will need to stock up on “week 4” groceries, fruit, and milk.

I know it’s a little early, but I am optimistic we will succeed in staying within our $400 budget!

Wish us luck!