Spending freeze: the summary

Approximately 6 weeks ago, I decided to do a spending freeze. I had noticed that my discretionary spending was getting a bit out of control and I needed a way to rein it back in. My friend Steph over at Life According to Steph was just getting started on her own spending freeze so it was just the push I   needed to begin my own.

This wasn’t the first time I had done something like this; in fact, I think I’ve mentioned that for years I was part of a no spend/controlled spend challenge. My years doing that helped tremendously when my husband and I were paying off our consumer debt and I really made me focus on wants versus needs. It was time to revisit that, except with my “fun” money rather than my household income.

So how did I do?

Overall, I did pretty well. I didn’t track the amount of money I spent during my spending freeze (because I wasn’t perfect. I admit it. I reported many of my transgressions on Facebook) but I don’t believe it came to more than $75. In my defense, about half of that was for charity. I spent $20 on a registration fee for my YMCA’s Strong Kids Campaign Zumbathon and another $10 in raffle tickets during a Zumba master class (the money went to the Delaware Ronald McDonald House). In good news, I won a prize during the raffle and the value of the prize far exceeded what I donated (the Zumba pants alone are worth $65). Oh, and I gave $2 to my daughter’s school so she could participate in stuffed animal day. That money went to a fundraiser for a child in the school who’s doing a brain tumor awareness walkathon. So that was the good, selfless spending.

The bad spending came in the form of several iced teas from Dunkin Donuts,  some sodas, one lunch out, a couple of bottles of nail polish, late fees at the library (this is a terrible, terrible problem that I have. I am getting better but it’s still really, really bad), and some fabric for my Townhouse Pioneer project (speaking of which, have you signed up for the newsletter yet? No? Well, why not? It’s free and it launches soon!). I can justify some of the spending but I’m not going to. I’m going to just say that when it comes to certain items I am weak, have no willpower, and probably need to add a line item to my budget for them. Or remove them altogether because I really don’t need to drink soda anyway and I need about 75 hands in order to wear all the nail polish I have.  Also, I should probably stop being so damn lazy and just make more iced tea at home when we run out.

But wait! There’s good news. While I spent some money over the last 6 weeks that I didn’t need to or shouldn’t have, I did refrain on a number of occasions, particularly on my biggest budget busters. For instance, I added a number of books to my Amazon shopping cart but never actually bought them. I got a couple of new songs for my iPhone but I had an Amazon local coupon for 2 free songs so no money left my pocket.  I bought nothing frivolous or unbudgeted for my daughter during the 6 weeks (or my dogs or cat. They get spoiled, too). I paid for zero new apps and did not get another pedicure. Those are all huge victories for me.

I also took complete advantage of the Redbox coupons I get every week. We have an entertainment budget but it tends to disappear quickly, mainly due to the fact that I’m horrible with remembering to use coupons. That substantially improved over these last 6 weeks and we even remembered to return a few of the movies within the 24 hour period before we get charged for another day. Small steps. Small steps.

The other thing I did that helped improve my spending was to clean out my part of our bedroom. I reorganized all my makeup and beauty products, evaluated my clothes and shoes, and sorted all my craft stuff. Being aware of what’s on hand made it so I didn’t waste money on duplicate items and talked me off the ledge when I wanted to buy something (ex., Jana, you really don’t need a third bottle of blue nail polish. Jana, there are 12 glue sticks in the house. Jana, you still have 4 tubes of lip balm. Stuff like that).

So what do I do now?

Now I take the habits and lessons I learned during the last 6 weeks and start applying them to my daily routine. I need to get better about saving my money since right now, I’m not earning any (we can talk about this another day. But it’s bad. Thankfully, my husband has a nice, steady secure job).  I think what might also help is doing an envelope system for what’s left of my discretionary income. This is how we manage our household money and it’s made a huge difference. Maybe it’ll help with this as well.

What do you think?