Stephen and I have been all over the place regarding our spending. Since he started his job we went from paying our bills and having a very small amount left over to being very lax and pretty flexible in the money department. In other words, not very good stewards of the money that God has blessed us with.I came across this blog a few days ago and I am in love. She has some awesome tips on space saving, de-cluttering, and home organization on the cheap which is right up my alley. Then today I stumbled across this article. Umm, can we say conviction? And seeing as it's almost a new month what perfect timing, right?
So! Upon Stephen's arrival home this afternoon (and with his 'go ahead', of course) I will be declaring August as "No Spend Month"! I'm actually kind of excited because I love a good frugal challenge.
We've already taken measures to reign in our spending. Stephen has a checking account for bills, I have an account for grocery money. We already had a savings account that was kind of labeled as our "cushion account" which will be no more; it is now strictly savings. This week we opened another checking account for our 'fun money' or allowance and another account for house/car maintenance. So 5 accounts in all if you need help adding that up.
I know all of the accounts seem a little extreme, but we need to have these split up so we can have everything in front of us instead of trying to function from one main account.
After reading several of Small Notebooks posts about spending I've come to the conclusion that
1. I really don't need most of the stuff I buy.
2. It takes up a ton of time I could spend doing way better things *ahem* teaching my children *cough cough* spending time with the Lord. (Whoa whoa, is that vulnerability I sense?)
3. We have some serious debt we could be paying off (ie. house, student loans).
4. We want to be in the world and not of it. Something that Stephen says often is "It's all gonna burn eventually". Sounds harsh, but true. This life is temporary so why should I be investing the bulk of my time seeking out things with no eternal value? Not saying there's anything wrong with enjoying this life, but what is the ultimate goal?
Hmm, I can already tell this is gonna be good!
Anywho, I'm going to attempt to post once a week in August about our progress. I'll come up with the rules and get it put up possibly Monday the 2nd. If you want to jump on board and do it with me that would insure some awesome accountability.
Happy No Spending!
4 comments:
I did something different last month (July). I wrote down every penny I spent. I found I spent way less because I knew I would have to write it down and see some of the useless things I bought. Goodluck with your experiment. We all need to be wiser with the money we're blessed with.
Good idea on keeping a record!
We've started keeping all of our receipts. We have yet to organize them though. It makes me a bit sick to my stomach to see how many we've accumulated. I don't want to add them up. Ouch.
We use Mint.com. It is FREE from Microsoft. You enter in all your accounts be they bank or credit card or whatever and it automatically tracks you transactions. You set budgets and it categorizes the transactions the best it can and you can go in and edit them. We love it! We've used it for almost two years now.
I've heard of that Sarah! Checking it out now. Thanks :)
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