2009 Goals

At the beginning of the year, I outlined what my Frugal Goals for the year were going to be. Two of them included spending less money on the “little” things as well as spend less money on eating out. I resolved that I would switch to a cash-only system for these two items, so I could easily limit the spending.

So, how is it going so far?

It was going great until the second to last day of the month. Some moms from my 5 year old’s class invited us to meet them at McDonalds to play. Sounds great…but I had already spent all my cash for the month. I was going to decline the invitation, but my husband offered to pull some more money. If it wasn’t for this blog, I probably wouldn’t have thought too much about it, but I do want to be truthful and accountable. However, I have deducted the amount that I spent from February’s cash, and will adjust February’s spending down accordingly. I did learn that I should try to save some money for the end of the month, just in case something like that comes up again.

Other Lessons Learned

I need to have an additional amount of cash set aside for practical items like washing the salt off our cars and other things that you have to pay cash for that I was reluctant to use from my budget.
Cash burns a hole in my husband’s pocket. Since I was getting an allowance, it was only fair that my husband get one too. However, he quickly burned through his in less than half the month (his was much smaller than mine, because mine included the boys too). I believe he spent much more than he did when we used our credit cards for most everything (paid off each month, of course). So, I’m going to hold parts of his money to allocate throughout the month (with his agreement, of course).

I thought we did pretty well, though. I think that knowing exactly how much I had left helped me to make the choices as to what to purchase and when. I look forward to seeing how it goes this month.

Have you tried doing cash only for a budget item? Do you have any tips to help me? For more frugal ideas visit Being Frugal.

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Lynnae at BeingFrugal.net is hosting Tightwad Tuesday this week. I’ve never done it before, but I was intrigued with the theme this week, which is frugal goals for 2008. I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions, because I believe you can start change anytime. In fact, I normally don’t like New Year’s resolutions, because the gym gets really busy for a month or so . Anyway, I’ve been thinking over the last couple of days if there was anything that I wanted to change about my spending this year, so here goes.

Spend less money on the “little” things – Sometimes when I’m out and about, I like to get a Coke…but those drinks add up over time. I’m thinking that I might go to a cash-only basis on “fun” money since then I’ll have to think harder about handing over my money and when it runs out, I’m done for the month.

Spend less money on eating out – I don’t think that we do a bad job as a family, since I plan our dinners (and who wants to go out to eat with 2 kids hiding out under the table??), but I do have a weakness when it comes to lunches. If we get too busy running errands in the morning, I find it easy to go through the drive-thru on the way to dropping my older son off at school. I think that a solution to that problem is like the above one…a cash-only basis on “fun” money and planning ahead when we are running errands, etc, in the morning. I could pack a lunch or snacks to bring with us to resist the temptation.

Get more organized at home – I feel like I’m pretty organized, but there’s always room for improvement. I plan on purchasing this system at Motivated Moms to help me this year. I want to try to figure out the best (fastest) system for me for couponing, sending in rebates, and blogging, so I can spend the most time with my family. If you’re not organized, you could run out of items from your stockpile (and have to purchase at high prices), stock up on too much of one item because you don’t know what you have, lose coupons, miss out on sending in rebates, etc.

Tweak my budget to pay ourselves first – It was easy to save money when I was working from home (I would split my earnings out by percentage for IRA, 529 plan, and “fun” money/emergency fund). But, since I was laid off last May, we don’t have the extra money to do that. I need to find it in our budget this year.

Wow…for not normally setting resolutions, I was able to come up with a few . For more frugal goals for the new year, see BeingFrugal.net or the Happy Housewife.

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