Week Three of the Spending Freeze Challenge

I'm happy to say that my husband and I are still working together on this.  It's challenging and I find myself having to say no to a lot of things.  Keeping the goal of home ownership in mind gives me strength to stay on task.  This week I celebrated paying all our bills current and some early.  I can't remember the last time this happened but I know it's been at least 3 years.  I'm super-crazy happy over this not-so-small-to me success!

Here's an overview of week three...

1) Over the course of a week, we spent $106.97 on groceries.  This exceeded our grocery budget by $6.97 but I had forgotten to get ingredients to make a dessert for a carry in and needed to buy the ingredients for a tonic I make for colds.  I had a nasty sinus infection and the $2.89 I spent to make it was way cheaper than going to the doctor's.  This was also the first week where I felt like we had enough food.

2)  Matthew's shoes had come apart, the fabric was no longer attached to the soles of his shoes, and he needed new shoes.  I gathered some items that Liam had grown out of, took them to the consignment store and ended up paying 48 cents for 4 pairs of new-to-us shoes.

3)  I keep forgetting diapers at the grocery store!  Not good when my youngest is not potty trained.  :-(  I took several of my Thirty-One bags into the consignment store and got enough to buy a large box of diapers at Sam's Club.

4) It's nearing the end of the season for my job and everyone is exchanging gifts with their secret pal.  I politely turned down the instructions to participate and kindly repeated my answer when they tried to make me feel guilty.  It's a fun end of the season activity but our future home is going to be worth it.


To read more about our Spending Freeze challenge, click on this link: Frugal Living