If you are on a budget, I would suggest staying away from the fair because you will probably spend more money than you expect. Since we had not been to our local carnival fair for 5 years, we decided to head there for some fun on Labor Day. Thankfully, I had a visa giftcard I had forgotten about (my husband waited for a later flight a month or so ago and received some money from the airline for giving up his seat) so we actually did not spend any money out of pocket. However, I had no plans to spend that whole giftcard, so I prepared myself first by checking…

I felt like titling this post: November Budget Diary, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly! I started the month strong with all of these lofty goals and then I succumbed to some spending, mostly good deals but still… Here is a look at my month day by day! Nov. 1 Free carwash Changed car/house insurance (estimate yearly savings -we were adding a new driver and current insurance was outrageous- $1800) Closed out October budget and added flexible spending categories Planned out November budget Nov. 2 Haircut J (savings $20) Nov. 3 Canceled Amazon prime music: $8.99 monthly savings Nov. 4 90c off gallon at Kroger: filled up tank! Nov.…

Last week, I enjoyed reading KellyAnn’s post entitled Closet Confessions. I have been wanting to do something similar for myself this year to help me get an idea of what I am buying, whether I am wearing it and if it was a good buy and also to help me decide when I should have what I can a lean month. A lean month is when I halt my clothes shopping for the month and work on preparing more budget friendly meals. Before sharing my tips for this month, I wanted to share my clothes spending for January and February. Please remember that everyone’s budget is different, what one might…

I haven’t been making an effort at budgeting in the past few months and one of the ways that I notice that is that our grocery bill keeps increasing. Yes, the prices of food might be going up but most of what I buy seems to be about the same price and I should not see the large increases in my bill. I shared with my teen how high by grocery bill was last week (before this one I am sharing) and he asked me : “Remember when you were trying to keep your grocery bill at $75 to $100 a week?”. I spent $300 that week and barely bought…

I am taking a little blogging break to devote a little more time to other things the next couple of week (I will still have my style posts on Mondays) but wanted to share one of my biggest money lessons  I learned this past month. It is not a new lesson but hopefully this time, I will heed my own advice. Some of you may know, since I mentioned it a couple of times that I was doing a no spend month in March. That usually means I am trying to reset my budget because I overspent in an area. I also have mentioned before that I track my spending,…

My main goals are typically similar each year but with each year, I hopefully gain some wisdom, learn some new skills and tools to reach those goals. My two main goals have to do with the blog and my spending. Budget Clothing  With a more flexible income and budget often comes more spending! I was disappointed in myself last year with how much I spent on clohtes. I did not add it up like I planned to but I know the numbers would be scary! So this year when I record my spending in my ledger, I will be highlighting my own clothing purchases as a category. Highlighting it in…

I shared my pantry reorganization a few months ago in this blog post and today I am sharing another pantry redo to show you how different spaces can be reorganized. My pantry is a walk in pantry with two walls of shelves while my friend pantry is a row of 4 shelves with two doors that open out. This little project was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed doing something like this for my friend. Before Here is the before of the pantry! The pantry is really quite roomy and the shelves are well spaced. My friend keeps pantry well stocked but needed some help with grouping things…

I like to write these posts because they make me accountable and help me brainstorm what I need to work on for the following month! Spending on Clothes As I mentioned before, at the end of August I made of goal to not spend money on clothes till the end of the year! Well, that was a pretty lofty goal and while I did fail miserably, I also did succeed for 50 days which is a pretty nice accomplisment for me. I did spend and buy several things since then including: set of 4 belts (Amazon) tunic (Amazon) 2 skirts (Amazon) a dress on clearance (Target) sweater dress (Target) hat…