by Karen on September 24, 2009
Yesterday I confessed that we kind of blew our budget this month. After a summer living on cash, we went a overboard once we started using our debit cards again. It wasn’t that we went completely nuts and totally disregarded our budget. It was much sneakier than that. It was a few things here and […]
by Karen on September 1, 2009
Is it really September 1st? It seems like just yesterday when I started no spend summer, but it’s been three months. Tony received his first paycheck of the school year at the end of last week, which means our experiment is over. But I have to be honest, it feels like it ended at the […]
by Karen on August 10, 2009
One of the top complaints I hear about cash budgeting is that it’s harder to track spending with cash. When you’re swiping a debit card, it’s easy for to track spending electronically. When you’re spending cash, there’s a little more work involved. I use Mint.com to set and track my budget. The idea of changing […]
by Karen on August 5, 2009
Our no spend summer has resulted in the lowest balance on our checking account in, well, as long as I can remember. I was paid Friday, and after paying our bills and buying our groceries, our checking account balance is now $250. I know there were times when I was in college, and even after […]
by Karen on July 30, 2009
We were not as successful this month as last month. We made a handful of unnecessary purchases on our debit card in desperation, not because we needed things but because we wanted them. I know, I know, we’re bad. But this is an experiment. In the beginning we set a goal, and even though we’ve […]
Photo by lincolnblues I can’t believe it’s been a whole month since we began our cash budget. It has flown by so quickly, but I guess that’s a good thing. As I wrote yesterday, the longer we go, the harder it gets to keep it up. A lot of our initial excitement and motivation has […]
by Karen on June 30, 2009
Photo by benklemm Just last week I wrote about the importance of dreaming big. Sometimes the day-to-day reality of living frugally can be tough. Having big goals to remind you why you decided to scrimp and save can make it easier. By keeping my eye on the prize, I’m reminded of why the daily sacrifices […]
by Karen on June 29, 2009
I’m ready for a short week after a fantastic, relaxing weekend! It was a great weekend budget-wise. We only have $3 cash in our pockets today, but we’re getting better at appropriating our cash for the week. After finishing our grocery list and doing price estimates based on past costs, we determined that we were […]
by Karen on June 23, 2009
Photo by qisur Back when it was easy for us to head out and spend a little extra money on entertainment, we neglected all the free entertainment we have available. Since we started living on a cash budget, we’ve had to get more creative about how we entertain ourselves on the weekends. A lot of […]