June savings is tallied, and although we’ve spent the month more relaxed with spending because of a friends’ destination wedding and out of town guests, we still managed to save a chunk. If your asking how in the world do we do this? How ? Here’s how—we follow our guideline of spending restrictions(although a little loosely this month), as we’ve been doing for the past 12 months. On top of these rules, Brad received pay in a timely manner from some of his freelance contractors. Amazing, right? If you’ve followed this blog for a while, it seems like I’m always complaining that he is never paid on time. At the beginning of this month, we were predicting another month of delayed pay. But his invoicing went through without a hitch, and to our surprise, he started receiving payments last week.
However, it was a socially interactive month, which makes saving money difficult. I admit, we make exceptions to our spending guidelines with out of town guests and travel, and this month had both. But we didn’t blow the bank! With our visiting friends, we ate the majority of meals at home and participated in free fun sightseeing activities. When we actually did venture out with them to restaurants, we sought out budget friendly eateries. Also, nowadays, we order menu items that can be easily split—pizza is a favorite for this reason. While on the road to our friends’ wedding, we shared a budget motel room with another couple for 2 nights. On the third night, we slept on couches and air mattresses slumber party style with our old college friends. Brad and I look forward to the day when we can afford ourselves a little more luxury when we travel, but for now, these money saving actions are necessary. Besides, we had a blast with our old friends! That’s what this trip was all about anyways—not fancy hotels or fine dining.
So, we’ve managed to tally up a total of $2,859.90 in savings. Impressive as that number may be, it might be just shy of meeting our $25,000 debt reduction goal for the year. I will apply this total savings to my student loan, and post our July 1 debt totals on Monday. We’ll do a side by side comparison from where we started with our debt from a year ago, and where we are today.
And that’s a wrap folks!
This month rounds out our year long spending lockdown (no restaurants, bars, entertainment unless free, coffee shops, bakeries, generic brands, no clothes shopping, and on and on). This time last year, we were preparing to embark on this spending fast, and to this day, my first post on this blog remains my favorite—Acting Our Wage. So does this mean, we’re done saving money? NO WAY! Our life has been forever changed because of this spending fast, and the length of time (1 full year) has impacted our spending behavior greatly. We’ll continue to penny pinch, save money and pay off our debts, but we realize we don’t need a set of guidelines anymore. We feel like our money saving is more ingrained in our psyche now. As for the future of this blog, I have yet to decide, but most likely, I will keep it up however post less frequently. I would still like to share our savings and debt payoffs as they occur. Our ultimate goal is to be DEBT FREE, and it would not be any fun if you didn’t get to witness this journey.
July 1 debt totals coming to you on Monday! Have a great weekend!
Our First Official Splurge
Confession.
So we’ve been going about the business of sticking to our Operation Debt Reduction spending guidelines for the past 7 months. But yesterday, I think we technically went off of it with a pretty big purchase. We bought an acoustic guitar.
Now, we could try to validate this purchase by saying that musical instruments were not included on our “no spend” list. Yeah, that would be pushing it. We could even think of it abstractly, like playing the guitar is therapeutic so this is an authorized health related investment. Ummmm okay. Or we could just say, “You know what? We splurged!”
No matter how we categorize this purchase, it’s definitely not a necessity. Despite that, we are finding pure joy in owning a new acoustic. This decision to buy one came about over the past month while we borrowed my sister’s guitar. Brad’s love of the acoustic was rekindled on top of my newfound love in learning to play. Some things just can’t be explained, and I won’t even try. We’re really going to try to buckle down and get back on track with low spending for the month of February. We’re still laser focused on our Operation Debt Reduction mission.
Looks like we won’t be hanging around the 70’s much longer. After applying $414.97 worth of monthly savings to my student loan on top of monthly minimum payments on both loans, we’ve reduced our overall debt by over $800 this month. It would be impressive to bring our debt total down to the 60’s by the beginning of next month. This will require some diligent penny pinching on our part, but we’ve proven we can save big when we cut back on grocery and general household spending. To check out the progress of our debt reduction over the past 7 months, visit here. To see how we’re saving money, check out our Operation Debt Reduction spending guidelines.
Everything is shaping up just fine with our savings for September. Man, we CAN’T WAIT to tell you how much we saved at the end of this month. The big reveal will come towards the end of the week. How are we doing it? We’re applying Dave Ramsey’s rule of “live like no one else, so later you can live like no one else.”
Simple rule but difficult to abide by.
About Me
My husband and I, both artists, are seeking financial sanity amidst the financial insanity in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are on a quest to change our spending habits, get out of debt and start saving.
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