Sticking to Our Budget = $AVING$

Trick-or-Treating was here yesterday and we limited our household to just $30 of treats and that was gone in under an hour! Now THAT was fast! Another thing that has gone fast was October! Where did the month go? It seems it was just yesterday we were meeting with Aidan to plan out our month. This also means that we only have two months left of Project Money and we are trying to make the most of it.

Earlier this month, Aidan challenged us to see how long we could go without doing “major” grocery shopping. We are happy to report that for the last three weeks, we have only spent $60 per week on groceries. That is a third of what we were normally spending per week! We never would have thought we could survive on so little. We have had lots of fun creating meals from foods in our freezer, fridge and pantry. The list of possible meals is still quite long, so we feel confident that we can work off this list for some time. A special thanks to Aidan for waking us up to the realization that we already had the groceries available and we were overspending when we truly didn’t need to.

Our month is going pretty awesome as far as being under budget, too. As of today, Summit’s Climbr tells us we are $1,011 under budget for the month! This is definitely something to be proud of! I guess you could say Project Money is teaching us some amazing things! As excited as we are to see these savings, we look back at our financial past and are almost embarrassed at how we managed our finances before. Our spending habits were so bad. We were using credit cards as a convenience, making frivolous purchases, eating out often, and didn’t realize just how little we were saving each month. Now, we are shocked when we see how much money we have been able to save in such a little amount of time. Talk about an eye-opener!

Folks, this budget thing really works! If you’re not currently using a budget, you need to get on board and see for yourselves what you can really do. Utilize the tools that Summit Credit Union offers. Get that appointment with a financial coach to get the ball rolling on a better financial future. You will be amazed at what you are capable of doing! We feel that we have already won on this journey because of what we have learned and have been able to apply to our daily lives. We know we are in a much better financial state than we were five months ago. The best part is, we can pass this knowledge onto our children, friends and family. It is not really a secret; you just have to know how to apply this knowledge and be diligent in following your budget or you are just fooling yourselves.