On a No Spend Month until further notice.

Yes, that is right. We will be doing a NSM until further notice...

My husband lost his job on Thursday. I admit I was quite shocked. I guess I shouldn't be so shocked given the current state of the economy. I know many who have also found themselves unemployed...it is so sad. I do praise God for urging me to get a some bills paid off and for storing up some food. Thank you Lord!

Fortunately for us, my husband was given 3 weeks severance pay and he does qualify for unemployment benefits. Though, we are praying he will get a new job in the next couple of weeks. He has to wait to begin any new job until mid March so he can receive all his severance pay. The positive in that, is he can rest a bit. He has worked so very hard these past couple of years and truly needs to rest. BUT!!! While he is resting he will be submitting his resume all over the place looking for another job. He will even do interviews when called for one. So, lets call this a 'job hunting vacation', okay?

I will begin posting on Monday's and Friday's again. I will need some accountability and definitely some encouragement during this time in our family's lives. That means I have to post regularly so I can stay on track and motivated. I am going over our budget this weekend. Monday I will post about expenses I was able to cut and how I am looking to bring in some extra money on my own.

Blessings,

No Spend Tips...

First, I am sorry to have been MIA these past few days. I've been taking care of my sweet baby girl who is cutting 4 teeth, poor little darling. I have a brief break so I will be quick today.

Something I realized this month is when we have money we spend it. We don't spend it as wisely when it is just hanging out in our checking account. Last month I was able to do so much with our money...all good things. This month, we have eaten out more than the twice a month I had planned. Why? Because we can, plain and simple.

I have come to the sad realization that I am not very disciplined with money. It is hard to say that but it is the truth. I do great when I spend it all at one time on things that are needed or to pay bills off. Having X amount of money in the checking account is to tempting for me and for my husband. He isn't very good knowing there is money in the account either. So, we have decided to spend all the money each payday only leaving $50 for the unexpected. We did that during our NSM and it worked great. Knowing we didn't have money, or a lot of it kept us cooking at home and sticking to our meal plan. We were much more prudent last month than we have been so far this month...our 'spend month'. Boy we took that term literally, didn't we?

Bottom line for us, we can't have excess money laying around with no where to go but in the trash...

Paying off bills while spending a little money.

I feel like it has been awhile since I've been here posting. I want to continue posting updates during this 'spend month' but I also don't want to bore you.LOL I did pay $700 on bill this month, so I haven't gone spend crazy. The bill I am currently focused on is my son's ortho bill. Once we get it paid off we can get our daughter who will be 16 braces. She is such a beautiful girl and has patiently been waiting her turn to get braces. Hopefully by her birthday she will have them...which is in May.

I have challenged myself this month to buy enough groceries with my normal grocery budget of $1000. It will be hard and I probably will need to add a bit to it, but I think I can come close. Next month doing my 2nd 'NSM' I am again going to keep $50 for basics like eggs and produce.

We went to Sam's Club and stocked up on all the normal things I would typically buy. We did add a metal shelf to put in our storage room so we could put our bulk items on it. Plus, we have a 'preparedness' food stock that we've been building up. Having that food stock has helped us in our first 'NSM'. I know most families have to grocery shop monthly because you don't have a well stocked pantry to go as extreme as I did. It really isn't to hard to build up you pantry...I'll talk more about that in another post.

My husband and I have always tried to have 2 months worth of food in the house. Living in Florida during hurricane season showed us how important it is. When Katrina hit, our grocery store shelves became bare. There was no milk in the dairy aisle. Gas was only delivered once a week so you really had to conserve. After living through that we saw how fragile our food system can be. And to be honest, it really scared us. We had back then 5 children to protect and feed. Now we have 7 children to protect and feed.

We currently live in what I like to affectionately call the 'frozen tundra', in NW Minnesota where it is extremely cold! If our little town were to lose power because of a horrible storm like much of the USA has seen this season, we would be in trouble. The nearest town to us is 25 miles away but they would probably not have power either. And they are a lot smaller than us so they may be sold out of food. So, we like to be prepared for what may come.

In preparing ourselves we are buying chickens this spring so we can have eggs and meat. My children are so excited about having chickens. I am excited about not paying $2/dozen for eggs. My family can eat a dozen eggs for breakfast easy. I counted up last month how many eggs we go through and figured out it was 13 dozen and that is cutting back some because it was our 'NSM'. Keep in mind, I bake a lot! On any given week I bake 4 dozen muffins, 6 dozen cookies and a cake. I cook pancakes twice a week and we only eat eggs with our breakfast once a week. Being a large family we just eat a lot of eggs.

Next on our agenda this spring is to put in a large garden. We live on 2.5 acres so we have some room. We have one producing apple tree and are adding 4 more apple trees, 2 apricot, and 2 pear trees. I am so excited about having my own produce. Grocery store prices are only going up and I have had enough! For the little money we have spent on seeds and trees, we should be able to recoup that in our first season. Next year, it will be even better.

We are totally trying to cut out as many expenses we can. We have cancelled our cable tv, went bare bones with our land line telephone and didn't renew any of our magazine subscriptions. We do have cell phones but we switched to a new company and that lowered our family plan by $25/mo. We joined Netflix so we could still watch movies but that only costs us $14/mo which is a lot less than paying $85 for Direct TV. In the course of one year we will have saved $1260 by making these changes!

This first 'spend' week has been a good one...

Friday Follow-Up...

Well, it is the end of the month. I am officially calling today the last day of my 'No Spend Month'! It has a been a great month and I've learned a lot!

The biggest accomplishment for this month was paying off $1400 worth of debt...yay! February will be a restock month for my pantry. I'll be heading to Sam's Club to buy 100lbs of flour! And many other items. It sounds like a lot of flour but that will have to last for two months and half of it is for our 'emergency supplies'. I also do a lot of baking and we eat homemade pizza once a week, so it doesn't last long. Plus, at $7.50/25lbs, it is a great deal.

I will pop in each week to give an update on my stocking up progress...and other tips.

Have a great weekend...

Motivational Monday...

No Spender's, we are in the home stretch! Can you believe in less than a week we will have completed our first NSM!? It hasn't always been easy that's for sure but oh how rewarding it has been...wow!

I just want to say that I am pleased with our accomplishments. I wasn't real sure if we could do it and for the most part, we exceeded my original expectations. Though, I was motivated to begin my first 'NSM', down deep I was a bit worried if I would be able to follow through.

I've had some unplanned for expenses, that I've learned to plan for, for the following NSM's. I've even had a few weak moments. Still, eating out a couple of times this month is nothing compared to the 10+ times we would typically eat out.

I went into our little grocery store twice this month, compared to the twice weekly I would have usually done. I didn't even set foot into the local Kmart, which I would do weekly and drop a minimum of $50.

There were no real temptations for me because we didn't have money sitting in our account with no place to go. I spent all but $50 of it on bills. That is really the way to go in my opinion. For me, I just don't do well with having a lot of money in my bank account so for my next 'NSM', I will do it the same way and just spend all the money on bills.

Lets finish strong this week! Ending our first 'NSM' with a bang! No matter what your personal goal was for the month, just thinking about where you are spending your money is a very good thing. Thinking twice about making a purchase will help so much in improving your financial situation.

Now lets hit the ground running...