Celebrating Small Wins

I want to take a moment to celebrate some of my small wins in the last few weeks. Our society is so much about “go big or go home”, that we forget even minor wins are just that… wins.

This month our “school” envelope ran out of money before the month ended. I was not diligent about funding the envelope and then school started and it was expensive! The problem was I still had to pay for The Girl’s school pictures. I went to our house petty cash jar and was able to roll almost enough money in coins to pay for it and just had to take a few dollar bills from the jar to cover the difference. I rolled $39 ($30 in quarters, $5 in dimes, $2 in nickels, and $2 in pennies). Then I grabbed $8 more dollars and I had enough money to cover the school pictures. Her package was $43, after tax the total was $46 and change. (I did charge the pictures as you have to order online, but I am going to the bank today to deposit the money and sending it to the credit card ASAP!) I’m super excited that we were able to cover that expense with money that really didn’t have any other purpose and was just lying around. I know it wasn’t much, but it kept us from adding to our debt! Winning!

As with most families, our grocery/food budget is one of our biggest expenses! For months we have been exceeding our budget! I’m very happy to say that for the month of August, we stayed within our grocery budget and even had a little bit of money left over! The leftover money does have a purpose as our budgeting period runs every 2 weeks. It will go to buy the first round of our September groceries. (When we planned our meals for September we really tried to shop our freezer and our pantry and we did a really good job. We actually don’t have too much to buy! Another small win!)

In the past, any leftover money would be put towards debt, but many weeks/months we were coming up short in our grocery budget. Going forward, I am going to keep leftover money in the envelope and hope that it helps combat any months where there is a shortfall. December, for example, is always an expensive month for food; we host a Christmas party and the food gets expensive. 

Hopefully carrying money over will help us to stay on budget during those more expensive months.

Last week I visited a local boutique in town and found some things that would make great gifts for a couple people. I got things for The Girl and a friend’s daughter, and picked up a couple stocking stuffers that my mom is going to give to people; (she is going to pay me back). The total was just over $50, of which my mom will pay me back $20. In the past, I just would have mindlessly whipped out my credit card and gone further into debt to make the purchase. This time, I made a different choice. (Actually, I couldn’t have used my credit card because I stopped carrying it in my wallet over 4 weeks ago! J) I wasn’t going to go further into debt to buy this stuff so I used my debit card from a different account. Granted, I can’t do this all the time because most of that money is actually earmarked somewhere, but for a one time deal, at only about $50, I was able to make that work.

None of these things were huge wins, but when put together, they add up to something pretty awesome… progress, growth, new patterns! I’m hoping to have even more small wins in the future; and I’m hoping to keep track of them! Small wins over time equal big successes!