Friday, August 1, 2008

August, No Spend Month (NSM)

Well, I must admit that this is NOT the best time for **ME** to do this. We have a lot of wants that are pretty close to needs. But seeing there is a need for us to start putting more money into the ER fund (we have a potential emergency coming up). AND we ended up spending on the credit card last month (ICK!). So inspired by Small Notebook's No Spend Month of July, we are going to attempt a No Spend Month for August. This will be a bit difficult as our anniversary is this month, not to mention my husband's birthday AND two other events (which escape me at the moment).

She was very vague in her rules, (there are bills to pay of course). We usually have $600 to spend on groceries/vitamins for our family (JJ requires a lot of special foods and supplements. But as she allotted herself $250 to spend, we will allot ourselves $300 to spend. That is for gas (normally we spend $160 a month on gas) and EVERYTHING!

In order to keep us from spending on the credit card (now and forever!), we will be wrapping them up in gift wrap. And maybe wrapping in duct tape. This will help us to ONLY use the card in an absolute emergency (we are stuck in a different town and need a hotel for the night type ER, end up in the hospital for any reason, etc.).

I must admit this will be REALLY HARD for me as this is usually the last month of garage sales. But seeing as there is nothing we really NEED, I will most likely not be saleing this month. We will be having our own sales instead. Every Friday and/or Saturday that I can, I will be having a sale. This will help declutter the house (in case we have to move), as well as bring in some extra income. I am SO THANKFUL that I did the extreme frugality exercise recently. That will really help. All future posts about this will have NSM in the title (so you can skip those if you are not interested).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good for you Paula, especially considering that this will be a challenging month for this. There's no real rules, just a budget and discernment. One thing I noticed last year was that by taking a break from shopping, even though I had been looking for bargains, it helped me to find other ways I could trim expenses and save more.