I'm a little late in posting our progress update for January. We've recently learned that we will be expecting a little bundle of joy in August. This week is the second trimester and I am finally finding a little bit of energy and a lot less nausea. We are so excited that our family is growing. Our mission to be debt free will take a slightly different course for a while but that's okay.
Some changes we made during January were we dropped our weekly grocery budget from $160 to $120. I was incredibly apprehensive about this choice but I was up for the challenge. It turned out really well my first shopping trip of the year was only $89 and that's without coupons!
We also implanted a "make due" week. Make due week is the last week of every month. We continue to set $120 aside for groceries however we only buy the bare essentials and force ourselves to "make due" with what is in our pantry. It forces us to be creative and it's kinda fun.
Other changes we made were to add three new envelopes to our system: Giftmas, Clothing and Family Fun. It's important to set money aside for different categories even if you don't plan on spending money on those items during that particular month. This way you'll be more prepared for the 2-3 birthday party months and it won't break your budget.
January was a fairly good month for us. We had a dipped into our savings during Christmas and so our first priority was to "repay" ourselves for the money spent. We had an unexpected expense when my husband's 15-year old car started acting up because of the severe cold temperatures but thankfully it was only a $100 fix. At the end of the month after bringing our savings account back where it needed to be we were be able to put an extra $171 towards our debt.
Great start to the year of change!
