No Spend-tember

I officially began my debt free journey this past July after having finally read the Total Money Makeover. One day, during one of my bouts of insomnia, I woke up at 3am, binge watched Dave Ramsey YouTube-ers, and sat down and created my budget.

For anyone that seriously budgets, and let's be honest, anyone in general, you know that summer is a big season to spend money. You get invited to weekly beach trips, living in the city there is a lot of outdoor dining, and just being out and about for a walk can cost you $6 if you pass the local FroYo shop. I personally find summer to be much heavier on the spending than winter is, quite frankly, because of all of the small expenses that "sneak up" on you. Have you noticed how quickly they add up?

So after two months of budgeting and saving most of my baby emergency fund, and still being a little short, I decided to put an end to the madness and get gazelle intense! Enter my No Spend-tember and No Spend-tober plan. If you've ever watched a financial vlog or read a financial blog, you may have heard of this concept. The concept usually comes around in January, after all of the holiday spending, as a reset button. The rules of the game are that you are not allowed to spend any money outside of your "four walls" and monthly bills; read the only shopping you will be doing is at the grocery store.

My reason for initially choosing two months was because of marathon training and my desire to also hit reset on my training as well, which was very inconsistent during the summer. Now that I've decided to postpone the marathon, and am looking to start a new job in October, I will probably shorten the time period to just September and allow myself a very small eating out and coffee budget for October to account for a lot of the getting to know you lunches and coffee breaks that come along with a new work environment. I haven't completely decided on this yet, but will let you know as soon as I have.

So for my progress so far this month, I am projected to save about $446 this month. This will both finish off Baby Step 1 and allow me to begin Baby Step 2 all in the same month! I have been really trimming down the grocery budget, trying to go through things I have stocked up in the freezer, and have two more babysitting gigs scheduled for the month, so I am hoping to bring this up to at least $600, by the end of the month.

I did slip up twice the first two days of the month due to poor planning and after work laziness on my part; read not going grocery shopping. I also had my annual gym membership fee and textbook fee for my Certificate course that I had to pay this month. All three additional expenses set me back about $72, so all in all, not too bad.

I'm having lots of fun finding ways to have fun without spending money. The weather has been unseasonably warm and has allowed me a lot of outdoor time, which definitely helps. Let's also be very honest here; my apartment has never been cleaner!!! Check back in at the end of the month to see how I did!