Well, I’m off by a week. Whoops! Not even sure where the time went. On to the good things.
All right, checking in for the March financial challenge, which was to curb impulse spending. And I did not meet this challenge. I did pretty well for about the first half of the month, and then kind of let it go out the window.
March was a rough month for me, and not to make excuses, but I think that’s part of what happened in my decision making process. I don’t think I would classify it as retail therapy, but I do think I had a tendency to start thinking “This month sucked, screw it, I’m gonna buy what I want.”
I should probably work on that. 😉
Anyhow, didn’t do so great at the challenge. Trying to participate in these challenges each month is making me more aware of my finances in general, so I feel I’m still getting something out of it. Can’t wait to see what April’s challenge is!
It’s been a rough couple of past weeks, but I still want to remember the good things. So here are a few items that made me happy!
March’s financial challenge is to curb impulse spending. I’ve actually done okay on this so far, I think. I did grab a bag of snack cheese at the grocery store on a whim, but it was new and looked so yummy! How could I resist?
I’m really working to try and only buy things I need this month, and things that I’ve planned to spend money on. As with the past challenges I’m not going to tally up and move money into my savings account. I know this kind of defeats the purpose, but I don’t have a good way to calculate how much that would be.
I’m also planning on going back over the spending spreadsheet and making sure it’s up to date. I’m hoping to see a trend that shows less spending as the months go by, but I’m not sure I’ve done very well with that so far.
I’ll check back in at the end of the month.
So, rather than trying to cut my bills I decided that I should be more diligent about tracking my spending.
I failed.
Generally I true up my spending weekly and that helps me keep an eye on things, but I haven’t finished my February spreadsheets yet and it’s already a week into March. The challenge for March is already going, and I’ll get a post up about that soon.
For now, maybe I should go visit that tracking spreadsheet I made.