Just a little triumph

So I have been learning a lot about saving. I have learned that I am not always as good as I should be but I am learning about lots of good ways to save. I finished the book a while ago but I have been practicing several of the money saving ideas all month. One thing I am really proud of is that we have been without Netflix for 2 months now. We have had it for so long that I really didn't think we could go without and now I know we can. I haven't really missed it terribly. We did rent a movie from Redbox once, but I mostly watch my shows on line and movies we get from the library. It isn't much saved but if you add it up it is $107 a year.

My big triumph for this post is that we got very close to our goal of cutting our budget in half. I was shocked when we calculated everything and figured out that we only spent 60% of our income for the month. I am so excited. And that was including an airplane ticket to go home. I feel like I have held off on so many purchases that at times have been so hard not to buy, but I feel like it has been worth it. When we broke down the categories we were under on everything except food. Food was about the same. I did work on stocking some of our food storage this month though so that is probably some of it, and we ate out more this month so hopefully I can work on that this next month and start using our stored up food.

I feel like it has been good for us to watch more closely what we buy. I don't feel like we have had to sacrifice much. I think a lot of it is that the little things matter. I get so tempted to buy a little thing here or there when I got to a store and I have had to be ok with leaving a store without buying something. I struggled a couple times but honestly after a few days I can't remember what it was I wanted to buy so obviously we aren't missing out. I also was tempted to buy Halloween decorations and decided to make them instead. We have some cute decorations made by my daughter and I that we can save for next year now, for free. And it was so fun to make them together. We also really wanted to go to a farm to do the petting zoo and pumpkin patch and all the fun activities but we decided not to because the ones in our area were really expensive, and I don't think my daughter feels put out any. We went to plenty of free Halloween events. It has been really good for us to try this. I can't wait for next month and to see how we do.

We have been thinking about something that we can do with our savings and one thing is that we may be able to afford a bigger place in a good neighborhood when we move next time. Another is, since we love to travel, we could take a trip after this training is over. Or we don't have to use it at all.

I have several other thoughts to share so I will post more later.