My Uber Thrifty Month In Review - September

This month was anything but a money saving venture, but my thriftiness leading up to this point certainly made everything we needed to do possible.  Moving expenses coupled with the back-to-school expenses made it a real challenge but I'm thrilled with how it all worked out.

I was able to pay all of our monthly bills and add to our Christmas fund.  However, I did not add to my savings accounts.  Amazingly, I did not have to move any money out of savings this month, so that was a relief.

I used my excellent credit standing to take advantage of some six month and twelve month same as cash offers to purchase our living room furniture and my new bed.  I used my state tax refund to pay off half of the living room furniture.  I used my earned overtime to pay off the credit card I used to purchase the dining room furniture.  I paid cash for everything else.

I maximized my budget to refill our pantry and freezer by scouting out sales at three different grocery stores and using as many coupons with those sales items as I could to bring the costs down even lower.  I stuck to our meal plan, jostling around those meals based on what we had purchased each week so I didn't feel the need to make additional purchases and thereby spend more money on things than I wanted to.

I did some investment cooking too by making a good sized batch of chicken broth and some refried beans for the freezer.  I find that investment cooking is a great way to inexpensively and healthfully add basic staples to our food storage.  I saved money by making bread and buying less of it from the store.  Homemade bread is so much better anyway and I enjoy making it.

We were careful to use up our food and leftovers before any spoilage occurred and avoided a lot of food waste.  Nothing irritates me more than to toss out food.  To me it is like throwing money right into the trash.

I carefully kept track of all my spending and regularly kept tabs on my bank account to avoid overspending.  I also made sure I didn't put anything on my credit cards that I didn't already have money to pay it off with when the bill came due.

To top things off I switched over from the temp agency to a permanent company employee.  Instead of getting paid weekly I am now paid semi monthly.  My first paycheck was mailed to me on the 19th of August but didn’t make it.  Buy the time they reissued it I had gone almost four full weeks without a paycheck.  Now my direct deposit is set up and we've had not paycheck problems, thankfully.

My much shorter commute meant I filled my gas tank once and despite the fact that I had plenty of errands to run I still ended the month with a quarter tank of fuel!  Not to mention how much extra time I have in the mornings and evenings now that I'm no longer stuck in traffic. 

So that is pretty much it in a nutshell.  As I look back on the month I am amazed I accomplished as much as I did with as little as I spent.  I feel truly blessed too.