Results of No Spend Month

I think overall we did pretty well at not spending money unnecessarily. There were several times that we would say to each other, or ourselves, it's No Spend Month we shouldn't buy this. Towards the very end I think we could have been a little more diligent but we did end up saving money. It wasn't as drastic as I was expecting (hoping). We ended up going over our gas budget by $7 but we also had to drive out to West Seattle and Jon had to drive to downtown Seattle for an interview, and gas prices are just ridiculous!

Jon spent $5 on fast food but he was buying food for my mom because she did something for him and it was his way of repaying her, or something like that.

We only spent $95 of the budgeted $150 for groceries.

I had to go over my $50 budget for baby supplies by at least $9 but probably more because I needed diapers for both boys at both houses (my parents and Jon's parents), go figure. Plus, we got the flu and I wasn't able to eat anything for a few days which decreased my milk supply significantly causing me to supplement with formula which meant I needed to buy bottles and formula of course. Asher is now mostly formula fed, added expense!

We spent $11 on auto parts.

And then of course there were like 4 birthdays this month. At first I was just going to say sorry we can't buy any gifts for you because it's our no spend month but I had already said I would get my niece Taygen new shoes and then my sister-in-law Julie threw a surprise birthday party for my brother at a bowling alley and we couldn't just go and not participate (well we could have, but we didn't. Actually Jon sat out but I played and Judah was free). Anyway, we ended up spending around $43 on gifts/bowling.

Obviously, we still payed our bills. But above and beyond our budget and things we didn't anticipate, we spent about $75.

But by not spending money on things we usually budget for or spending less we saved about $220. Not to mention the money saved on things we chose not to buy because of no spend month.

I'm happy with our results :)

*And on a very exciting note, Jon was offered a job!! Finally after like 3 months and 4 interviews Jon was offered a position as a benefit analyst for an insurance company in downtown Seattle. A friend in our ward submitted his résumé and put in a good word for him. It's not in his field obviously but at this point (10 months after graduating from grad school) we are just happy to have a good paying job with benefits so we can start paying down student loan debt and feel like we can be independent again. Things are looking up :)