Feb Spending Freeze Weeks 1 and 2 chatter

[aspentosh]

We had some interest in a February spending freeze. Figured I'd make a post so we can chat if we want  

How is it going so far in the first week? Anything harder than you planned? Anything easier? 

[aspentosh]

First week here has been mostly ok. There were so many sales in January that I resisted and I was not expecting them to continue into February. I've mostly resisted, lol.

Food has been great. $127 and I may just need another $10-15 in fruit/veggies to get us through the weekend. We're usually at $200 by now. And had easily eaten out 2-3 times. No eating out yet.

I failed on one account- bought a pair of SOREL shoes. I have a pair that I love love love and I'd said I'd buy another when they were worn out. The ones I have are definitely not worn out (fail) but at 50% off for another color I loved, I couldn't resist. Better luck next week.

Other purchases have come off our "pre-approved" list for February- dryer balls to eliminate dryer sheets and a fix for our basement water line.

[farfalla2011]

I think we're off to a good start. I had a couple expenses in the first few days, but those were planned for January and I just never got around to shopping. I did put together a month long meal plan and did a big grocery haul, so I'm hoping that will finally help keep our food spending in check! My main personal goal is no coffee out once back at work and only eating out once a week. Well, I started back yesterday and I didn't stop and get coffee haha. But, what will help is my office now has Chameleon cold brew on tap in our office which was a nice surprise, so that will definitely help curb the need to walk to Starbucks!

[ssmjlm]

It's easy to not spend on weekends b/c E doesn't want to go out much in her cast, can't really blame her, although she's getting better.

I just dropped $$$$ on thank you gifts for everyone though for helping, but it's worth it. Flowers for my mom, edible arrangement for the front office, and gift cards for the nurse and her teacher. I did a $$$ for the nurse because she was indispensable for us at school.

Good news is that some of the copays have been hitting my FSA account, so I've been able to do pick and pay to get reimbursed from those. $40 for each ortho visit is OUCH, but worth it when basically that's all we've had to pay.

[ellipses84]

I just saw this and will join! We are trying to get a better handle on our budget after a few expensive months! So far in February we’ve been doing well. Goals are to lower our grocery bill and eat out less (I’ll limit it to one work lunch/wk and 1 kid meal/wk since it’s better than we’ve been doing).

DH has been waiting for a promotion for way too long and got offered a position in another dept. that has potential to make more $$ but it’s not necessarily the career path he wants to take. He talked to his boss about a compromise - essentially keeping his current position and working a few hours a week in the other dept, with more opportunity for overtime if he wants, until he gets a promotion in his current dept. He’ll get the best of both positions in terms of pay and bringing an extra $300+/wk! We really need the income boost for him because I make a decent salary but his is low and we’re barely making ends meet in HCOL.

Whenever I get the urge to online shop, I’m making myself clean the house or organize. The only online shopping I’m doing is for necessities, like the kids OTC medicine so I can avoid a $100 trip to Target. I have a lot of financial catchup to do this week for medical and work reimbursements.

[aspentosh]

Wrapping up our first week already. Where does the time go?

Quickly summing up our first week below with the categories I really wanted to work on.

Food- Have spent $145 total so far. We ate out yesterday as our once a week dinner and ended up with pizza so it was a bit cheaper than expected. Still didn't need any fruit/veggies like I thought so that'll be pushed to next week.

Clothes- Two fails here. SOREL boots for me and a Patagonia fleece for DD for next year. Both the deals were 50% off, but again... fail. lol

House- only things were on our short and cheap preapproved list for Feb.

Weekend is looking to be good. I have a cold so am staying in. DD has cookie booths today so she and H will be busy doing that. Hoping to see a friend's son play hockey tomorrow if I am up for it. But no plans to shop

[blondemoment123]

So far so good!

I have to go to the Dollar Tree today and that will be a test in willpower. I usually end up with a candy bar or a toy for DS I don’t need.

ETA: Ended up sick so no trips to the store at all except the drive thru pharmacy. But I did have to pay my copay at urgent care.

[mccallister84]

We are doing well but DD1’s dresses are starting to look a little short so I might be buying clothes in the near future.

Next weekend will probably be a disaster - my parents are coming in to town and then H and I are spending a night at a B and B 45 minutes away. The hotel and dinner are already paid for but we will have to pay for wine and cocktails. And since my parents are coming in to help us out we usually end up spending $$$ on a nicer home cooked dinner and some lunches out.

[aprilsails]

I did not eat out once all week! Even though I could have as part of running errands twice and DD spent two days at home with us (teachers strike day and snow day) and we did all free activities.

My other big win is that I got new (To me) cross country skiing boots for $30! I traded in my too small ones for a credit and was able to get Smartwool socks for free as well. Hooray! I then went skiing twice, once with my Mom and once with my girlfriend on Wednesday and Thursday. I wore DS is his carrier and he was warm and both times that saved me from meeting up for coffee or something $$.

DH did groceries yesterday and didn’t go off list other than a kinder egg for DD. That is a miracle in and of itself. He did stock up on cat litter and salt for the driveway but both were necessary and will be used.



ETA- my other big win is that my stepsister gave me three Rubbermaid bins of clothes for DS. I have everything I could possibly need from age 6m-3T. This is amazing because I was running out of the gifts that I got for him as a newborn and was thinking I was going to have to start buying clothes (I generally buy at consignment and resale shops but that’s still $).

[aspentosh]

Grocery shopped for $85 (including some alcohol) so that's a win. At the rate that DD goes through strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries I am very tempted to try out frozen fruit for her (which she loves). On just those three things I spent just over $20 and that'll only last a week.

Resisted buying more Girl Scout cookies at my DD's cookie booth. Another win, lol.

Hope to finish of the week just as well.

[dcn]

My mom sent me $200 for my birthday (which really isn’t necessary) but I bought some new underwear with some of it and don’t feel guilty or like I should spend it on other things. It’s been a good 4 years since I bought any new underwear so it was definitely time.

Also 39 is the year when you get excited about spending gift money on underwear I guess lol.

[ohgillian]

I'm not doing a "freeze" per se but joined because I'm trying to stop buying things from Amazon. So far nothing in February. However, there's an item I want and I don't really know where else to buy it. Right now I'm doing without. So I guess that's a win?

[aspentosh]

Feb 11, 2020 8:35:35 GMT -5 ohgillian said:

I'm not doing a "freeze" per se but joined because I'm trying to stop buying things from Amazon. So far nothing in February. However, there's an item I want and I don't really know where else to buy it. Right now I'm doing without. So I guess that's a win?

Huge win! I'm not a huge amazon purchaser in general, but even I find it difficult at times to not just click and buy for the convenience. 

[covergirl82]

I was hoping to do this, but already failed. I signed us up for a summer membership at a local pool (so the summer babysitter has somewhere fun to take the kids that is close to home), which was $550 and then I spent $130 on some warm weather clothes for the kids from Old Navy last night (although it was 40% off the sale price). Maybe I can get back on track for the second half of February...

[numbers]

Feb 11, 2020 9:53:22 GMT -5 melmaria said:

Feb 11, 2020 9:29:15 GMT -5 covergirl82 said:

I was hoping to do this, but already failed. I signed us up for a summer membership at a local pool (so the summer babysitter has somewhere fun to take the kids that is close to home), which was $550 and then I spent $130 on some warm weather clothes for the kids from Old Navy last night (although it was 40% off the sale price). Maybe I can get back on track for the second half of February...

Are you ever going to address your spreading of misinformation about the flu shot on these boards?

[mccallister84]

Good news: picked up a tutoring gig and it seems like she’s mostly going to pay me with Venmo which feeds in to my capital one account so not particularly easily accessible. I usually like to have tutoring cash on hand for one offs, splurges and treats - since we can’t rely on the money we don’t ever include it in our budget - but I know it’s better to have it go directly in to savings.

Neutral: we just sent in the deposit on a basement renovation. We have the cash for it and we are using a new southwest card in hopes of getting the companion pass but it’s still a good chunk of change going out.

Bad: we are booked to go to Kalahari kind of on a whim.

[aprilsails]

Good: I stuck to our meal plan all week and really limited grocery shopping. Since DS and I have been mostly sick we haven’t left the house at all.

Neutral: I paid $14 for a very simplistic (but popular) neckwarmer pattern. It seems like too much for what it is, however I’ve already sewed up two to make as gifts for kids birthday’s this weekend. It’s very fast and easy and a great scrap buster so I guess there’s value in that.

Bad: I bought a shelf on sale for our master bedroom. It was fairly expensive still. I’m trying to do some proper decor for the new house and the bathrooms seem like the easiest (and smallest) place to start.

WTF: I had ordered a large painting for over our mantelpiece a couple of months ago. The website indicated it could be up to 5 weeks for production and shipping, so I wasn’t looking for it, but it should have showed up 2 weeks ago. I called up customer service, and apparently there was a disagreement about the exchange rate between the company and PayPal at the time of purchase. I had 27 cents outstanding on my account. So bizarre. I had no way of knowing this issue and I’ve never come across it before and like 50% of my online shopping is across the border and involves conversion rates.

[aspentosh]

Bad: The personal chef we've been using (basically eliminates our eating out) was sick this week, so we had to scramble with groceries and hodge podge meals.

Good: We spent around $100 and didn't eat out at all!! We did go to the grocery store like four times though. Also good, after paying off our monthly credit card spending, we had... a lot to move over to savings.

Neutral: Had to book DD's summer camps, and that was $320. It was planned and budgeted for but blah.

[brooke77]

Not on a freeze, but trying to reduce frivolous spending.

I bought a couple items of clothing. I’m returning them so I guess that’s a net of no spending.

A big win is that I have not bought DS any new clothes. He truly doesn’t need anything until summer, but I’m a sucker for kids clothes.

I’ve been solo parenting and using grocery delivery. Despite the added expense, I think it’s actually saving me money because it’s forcing me to make a grocery list and obviously stick to it. I’ll probably continue to use this even when DH comes home.

[farfalla2011]

Good - I've stuck to our meal plan and we've eaten at home all week! I planned our whole month which sounds crazy, but I also mapped out our grocery list to support it which is the part I hate and it's been a very smooth process. I plan to do something similar next month. I also have only gone out to eat once on my budget this week which was my goal, so that's a win too!

Bad - I reloaded my Starbucks giftcard ($25) on Saturday which means I've stopped for coffee 3 times since then. I fully blame H for this. I got stuck attending a birthday party for his daughter's friend on Saturday that I had no intention of staying for and was totally shamed for not going to watch her play golf (she plays and the party was with a bunch of her golf friends) while he was out with his friend mountain bike riding. He got a big ranty you owe me text and then I stopped for coffee afterwards.

[ohgillian]

I placed my second order at Amazon this week since December. (For context I placed 176 orders in 2019). Mostly what I’ve been focusing on is not ordering things on Amazon just because I see “a great deal” — I’m reminding myself that the “great deal” comes at the expense of questionable labor practices.

The thing I ordered this week I wasn’t sure where else to order (technically, it’s two things, but they go together). I’m not thrilled with myself but reminding myself that I don’t have to be perfect - - a lot of people making some improvement helps a lot. 🤷‍♀️

[ellipses84]

Good: I didn’t pay for any work lunches or coffee last week. Now DS2 is sick and we have a leak in our master bath/closet being worked on (we rent, so no $$ from us). It puts a damper on weekend plans but means we’re way less likely to spend $$. I was supposed meet up with friends at a restaurant but had to cancel due to DS1’s sports practice (sad but good $$-wise). I caught up on work expense reports ($400+). I filed our taxes and already got our state return.

Neutral: I only got takeout one time this week which was my goal (-$23). I’d previously used a gift card online for a few things including a very specific style of wallet I’ve been searching for months for. I’m keeping the wallet but returning two shirts that didn’t fit right and a pair of shoes where the sole started coming off after wearing 2 times. I have an eyebrow wax today but I waited an extra week and it’s pre-paid.

Bad/$$: A Dept. store near near my work is going out of business so I spent $40 on some clearance stuff for kids/gifts. I’m such a sucker for a good deal and there’s no returns so 🤷‍♀️. I’ve been stalking it for weeks waiting for prices to drop. After this there will be nowhere to shop near my work. All the other stores and both Starbucks moved out and they are renovating the downtown mall into office space, so it’s good in the long run. DS2 earned a specific toy reward from his bedtime chart so I’m going to brave target today and try not to spend any more than necessary. I also want to get a baby gift for my waxing lady because she just came back from maternity leave.

My goal for this week is to only eat out 1x max and get caught up on some medical HSA reimbursements. I also need to cancel our life insurance because it went way up after 10 years and switched companies on us. I already have a couple of supplemental policies, but we need to find a better policy for DH.

[aspentosh]

This weekend wasn't so great.

H spent $31 on laser tag for him and DD. It's an activity they do together though so oh well. And then he spent $22 on two audiobooks... even though we have Kindle Unlimited. Ugh.

We are trying a new allowance process for DD after reading a book and so we spent $10 on some glass jars to hold her save, spend, donate money. I tried to find something in the house but at $3 per jar it's not horrible. I kept the price tags on them for now in case I come across something free/cheaper, lol.

We finally got the last of our tax documents so I spent $40 on TurboTax and then $20 file state online. But we are getting back a good chunk of money that'll go straight into savings. Yay!

And I had been waiting to replace H's loofah with a BOIE scrubber (last longer, !00% recyclable option) and the time came this weekend. I got three (one for each of us) for $20 with their 15% off V-day coupon so at least I saved some money. And as I've said, in 2020 one of my goals is to eliminate as much plastic as possible so even though it was more $$ it's worth it.

Blah. Adding it up it's not horrible but our bills have been so fast because we've had very few transactions so checking Mint this morning I did a double take.

But on the good front, we were out all day yesterday and most of this morning and we didn't eat out!

[aspentosh]

One more week down. Definitely got back on track this week.

$92 on groceries with no eating out.

H spent $6.35 on a new band for his fitness tracker because his is ripping but otherwise nothing else was purchased! And I am still hoping to return the jars I bought last week (only $10 but still).

I already know March is going to be expensive in the first week because we are planning our summer vacation. But it'll be nice to have the cushion and ability to cash flow it after the first two months of the year.

[farfalla2011]

I'm happy about our progress this week! I picked up a partial lunch out which was in my budget, but it was only a small bowl of soup ($4.32) to go with my sandwich I brought. Usually lunch out is $10-$15 because of what is in walking distance, so I'm calling that a huge win!

I'm a little nervous going into the weekend since my step son has a tennis tournament tomorrow and that usually means eating out since it's 45 minutes from the house. I think it'll just be him and my husband since it'll be a little chilly to sit outside all day with our little guy and I'm sure my step daughter will be more than happy staying home. Hoping they go fast food instead of a restaurant which is what my husband always tends to do.

Also, I need to double check grocery needs for this upcoming week. I only have about $60 left in my grocery budget category and I REALLY want to hit it this month, especially since over some time I want to lower the total budget because it seems ridiculously high to me even though we never stay under it.

[aspentosh]

Not sure if anyone is still participating? But just in case, bumping up for our final check in

[aspentosh]

Wins: we hit our grocery budget exactly and I am really happy about that. I lowered it a couple hundred dollars at the beginning of January so we could really cut back and we're nailing it. Even happier about it because we had two weeks of scrambling for food and we didn't fall back to eating out.

Fails/neutrals: ended up spending some money to book our airbnb for summer (paid half). It was planned for March but things were already getting booked up (whaaaaat) so we went for it. It is what it is. And H went in for his tooth implant followup and found out he will need a gum graft (*$%^$&@). He had to pay the deposit of $400. It'll come out of HSA though.

Otherwise, I bought the last two things on our "approved" list- both sustainability based- and I was able to find some super cheap jars for DD's allowance so returned the ones for $10 and spent about half that.

We got our tax refund and it's going straight into savings because our credit cards, even with the airbnb charge, are super low and we can easily cash flow everything with some extra leftover.

Not sure what our plans are for March. I'll need to buy some tickets for our spring break trip and then stuff for DD's Easter Basket... hoping to really continue the good food spending and limit the house/clothing purchases. Not sure it'll be a true freeze though.

[farfalla2011]

We did great until this week. Overall, meal planning was ultimately a win for the month and I plan to do similar in March. I ate out for lunch 3x this week and got coffee twice. I'm bummed that I didn't stick with the plan, but at the same time, DH didn't stick with the plan and spent $$$ the last few days so, I dont feel that bad.

The positive of that though is we've been talking finances since December and his "had to purchase" spending actually is sitting on his conscience since its exactly what I told him 2 months ago that stresses me out and he thought I was over reacting. And he's now acknowledged that he proved me right. Not sure what's going to happen with that realization, but I'm happy that I can at least say I told you so. I just hope we still keep talking about our finances so it can truly be reigned in eventually.

[gt7301b]

February was not great for me, but I am planning to try again come March.

[blondemoment123]

I intentionally waited until today to get my nails and brows done so I could end February on a good note.

One benefit of being sick was not being able to leave the house and spend money lol. I even ordered less groceries because I was too sick to sort through my list.