Trim the fat from your piggy bank to find peace of mind, marriage, and money
Happy Frugal February everybody! It’s our annual “celebration” of reining in impulse in an effort to return to being good stewards of our cash. December involves extra shopping, and January almost always has some residual financial looseness from Christmas spending. Plus, with my birthday just two weeks after Jesus’s, it’s easy to get the Gimmes (and buy more) when I get to twice respond to the “What do you want?” proposition. Oh I love that question.
Not this month, though. Oh man, we’re going back to the most basic basics because we need a little a lot of moderation. Discretionary funding will be nearly nil and we’re setting our wandering sights back on our financial goals. The house needs improving, the Emergency Fund needs filling, and the kids will probably outgrow their clothes in a week so it’s time to set our noses to the grindstone.
With my shopping habits over-developed from the last couple months, I have some behaviors to change up to cut back. This my personal plan since I’m definitely the spendier one between Andrew and me, and I’m pretty pumped about taking some mildly extreme measures:
1) Delete the apps and avoid the sites: I had an Amazon app, an eBay app, and a Pinterest app; and I had to cut them loose because a) they increase the Distraction Level of my device and b) I was doing far too much “window shopping” that easily turned into real shopping. Granted Pinterest isn’t a place to buy directly, but a simple search leads me straight to the purses I don’t need. There are some daily-deal boutique sites that are just darling, too and I’m avoiding them like the plague. It doesn’t matter if a $50 item is reduced to $6.99 – spending is spending and I have to resist. I’m also a big fan of Amazon because I have a Kindle and a penchant for reading; I have plenty of unread books in the Cloud though, and even if I get the itch, I can borrow ebooks from Kindle-friends or my library, which I hear is an easy process.
OH! and I found an app for Google Chrome (my PC browser) that enables me to block websites and redirect them somewhere else if I choose. SO I’ve blocked Jane.com, Amazon, eBay, and Fossil and redirected them all to Dave Ramsey’s 7 Baby Steps to keep me goal-oriented. Though I wasn’t buying every time, “just looking” has a way of turning into “just this once.”
2) Stay home: Going out often involves making a purchase – gassing up the car, groceries, coffee with a friend, a shelf-check at Lowe’s or Hobby Lobby; but if I stay home, then none of those transactions happen. Of course the car will need fuel eventually and we’ll definitely need a milk-and-eggs run, but the point is to reduce the outgo. I have to remember, though that “nature abhors a void”, so with all the not going out I’ll be doing, I need to find things to do at home that won’t cost a dime: e.g. having a friend over for tea or coffee after the kids go down (I just did this last week! It was free and fabulous); going through the fridge and planning next week’s menu on the things I already have (you can find recipes by Googling random ingredients in your pantry; I just made my own sweet and sour sauce from stuff I had instead of running to the store); make a home to-do list and check off the things that have been hanging over my head; spend quality, 100% attentive time with my kids and Andrew. Go play outside, do a little yard work. You catch my drift.
3) FREEZE. While we’ve got the cinch fastened extra tight, we’re also taking a couple days to freeze any and all spending. Like now. We’re in the middle of a two-day game of Don’t Spend a Penny. What fer?? you ask. To practice a little self discipline. To allow what we have to suffice and avoid even innocuous spending. To stretch our pennies across more calendar blocks. Frugal February isn’t a spending freeze for 28 days, it’s a month to trim our budget and obey it down to the last cent; so it’s good to see how long we can hold out for conveniences at the cost of slight inconvenience.
4) Talk it Over…Online? I’m the money manager in our family and while Andrew is privy to the on-goings of our books, we have to make sure we’re on the same page. We’re so busy these days though, that it’s been impossible to sit down to talk only about our finances, which is absolutely necessary in marriage. With three boys makin’ noise and running around, we squeeze in 10 seconds of conversation before someone needs to go potty or find a lost race car from under the couch. Throwing my hands up, I decided that we would hold an eMeeting: I looked at our bank account, budget, and big-picture goals, wrote an email containing every detail, and sent it to Andrew to respond when he could. I told him how much we have in our accounts, emergency fund, and what expenses are coming up. I asked for his input about everything and waited for him to get back to me, even to say he read my email. Just knowing he skimmed is enough to get us started together and there’s no miscommunication over what we’re trying to accomplish. [eMeetings are becoming my favorite thing for communication during our young parenthood.]
Ahhh Frugal February – I’m glad to see you again. There’s nothing like coming to a complete halt to make me look around at the needs of our family and understand them as greater than the wants from my Pinterest boards. What measures do you take when you need to penny pinch?
This is great Katie! We are trying to do the same thing since baby no. 3 will be here soon. I’m trying to not spend anything period but with a birthday party coming up I unfortunately have to spend a little BUT I’m trying to go days without spending anything. I also want to work on the backyard this spring so I’m going to have a garage sale and use the money from that to put to the backyard.
RIGHT?? Oh man I loved my garage sale a couple summers back. Too much fun. And in your neck of the woods, you should have a fantastic turn out.
I just made a run to the store today and we’re gassing up both cars within the next couple of days – after that I think I want to go another round of Don’t Spend a Penny. OH! and I just saw that we went $12 under our budgeted water bill amount – slide that right over to the Emergency Fund! I’m finding it’s so much easier to move quickly on this step if I’m putting every leftover scrap in the Savings column.
Thank you so much for this post! I am not a mother but I am self-employed, with a disabled husband, and no health insurance. I am also a longterm diabetic on insulin–our local drug store just upped the price of one of my insulins $50.00 per vial (from $115 to $165, from one month to the next). When this sort of thing happened years ago, I put together a list of all the pharmacies within a few miles of our house, put in a grid (2 pages) with all of my prescriptions, and had my husband (former CPA) call each one for a price-check. The price differentials were eye-popping, for the exact same items!
This reminds me, it is past the time to do this, so this will be one of our February projects.
I also keep a running list of items for my home office, and then use discount cards from Staples or OfficeDepot or OfficeMax–many times, if you spend $50 or $60, you can get $10 or even $20 taken off the total. This gives a real incentive to not run out for just one or two items.
YES Catharine (love your name by the way! My full name is Catherine, too) – I get a kick out of smart shopping, too and get a thrill out of watching the numbers fall at the check out. Nice going with the office supplies! I’ve only known Office Depot to be pricey, but admittedly I haven’t shopped there enough. I’m glad to know it’s possible to make a good deal anywhere!
I love your posts because we are like-minded. Your kids are little now, but I encourage you to keep up the family focus even as they grow. Mine are teens and my oldest is in the Army – guess what they did on Christmas break? They invited all their friends to our house for a Monopoly/game night while I made pizza and brownies. They laughed themselves silly, didn’t spend a dime, avoided the electronics and reinforced those early, strong friendship bonds with other good kids. My added tip to parents in this electronic world is this – if YOU stay off the gadgets and give quality time to your family, they will respond and truly be the “delight around the dinner table.”
Such good advice, Kate – thank you. I really want to acquire the discipline to keep my device in one place instead of carrying it around the house with me. Life is much fuller when I’m not chained to that tiny thing. It’s not the device gets in the way, it’s my lack of self-control that becomes the obstacle to paying attention to my boys or serving my husband while he’s working.
Your description of your kids playing Monopoly was refreshing to read! I want my kids to be more interested in quality time versus quality stuff. Thank you for the bit of hope and wisdom!
Hi! I usually find your posts as links from spiritdaily.com–one of my favorite websites. I decided to do what you are doing with February. Like the title, Frugal February. We just had a birthday dinner for my son tonight. We found a $25 gift card that we had not used and combined it with a coupon we had received by mail from the restaurant. We ended up paying $18 and change for and an order that actually totalled over $58.00. We even got a free slice of pie for the birthday boy. We have also decided to fix meals based on what we have in our freezer and not buy any extra meat. This is serving a two-fold purpose. We use up older foods and then have a freezer that is easier to defrost. We have also been eating a lot of soups–very filling and so good for you with lots of good vegetables, like carrots and potatoes. Keep up the good work!
Awesome work, Barb!! When I stick to being frugal, I start to get a thrill out of it, you know? Tonight I made chicken strips for the fam, but used leftover mashed potatoes as a side. I *love* using what we have and showing my husband that what he provides doesn’t go to waste.
By the way, don’t you love finding an unused gift card? It’s such a fun bonus.