Wrapping up Low-Spend January

Wow, keeping track of things is so much harder the longer you put it off.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am closing January as of 1/25, since I won't be spending anything anymore. So, for Carla's Low Spend January, these are my totals...

I had a monthly budget of $100 for gas, $120 for groceries and $80 for misc/personal expenses. That was it. A total of $300 to spend on everything else that wasn't a bill or debt. Sounds reasonable.

During January, I managed to:
- Spend $102.94 in food. $17.06 leftover.
- Spend $52.00 in misc/personal. $28 leftover.
- Spend $84.52 in gas. $15.48 leftover.
- 24 no-spend days (including 5 future days, but I know for a fact I wont be spending)
- Two nights out having fun.

And I still kept it under budget? Heck yeah. Total leftover is $60.54. That will be used as a snowflake towards CC1. I am most surprised about the gas being under budget. I literally used a whole full tank to pay for the weekend I went to watch movies and then watch the football game, but apparently, I was still under, and my car is now the proud owner of a full tank. Again. I spoil that car too much.

Slightly ashamed of how high my personal budget is, considering it mostly goes on going-out nights. I still need to buy a pair of black work shoes and a pair of jeans to replace the ones that got paint all over them this past summer. But thanks to Carla [cough cough] the jeans will have to hold off, as she already has us gearing up for a second round of Low-Spending!

Her new title is Boot-Camp Sergeant. I did a double/triple-check on her last post about the Low-Spending February, and she mentioned 'another challenge' in March... the slave driver! (We still love her though. It's good to have someone to push us on these things.) So I'll be writing about that later on, as I have to modify the decluttering challenge because of my own restrictions.

As for the rules given back in January...
1. Track purchases. Done.
2. Start with the “sealed pot challenge”. Done too.
3. Menu plan & shop from a list. Yup! This helped a lot.
4. Find free & cheap activities to have fun. Failed, I think. $28 for movie tickets and $15 for pizza to watch the game arent free activities. But they were definitely fun.
5. Focus on simplicity, organizing, & donating/tossing. Fail. I still have the bag of clothes mocking me. I've never really donated clothes or anything else (I often just give them to my dad and he takes care of it).
6. Pay off cut-off emergencies. None happened. That I know of. Hurray!
7. No “pre-stocking-up”. Done.
8. Switch to all-cash. Done for the most part. I may resume during March or April, but I'm going back to cards for February.

Glad tomorrow is Friday! Thanks for the challenges, Carla! It will be hard to top this up in February, but I will certainly try.