Today I bought a pretty expensive elliptical machine. About 7 days of spending. So in order to meet my goal, from last month, of cutting spending in half, I'll have to have 14 days of no spending. I don't have anything planned for the coming week & hopefully can get away with just medical and food expenses! Wish me luck. In the meantime, I have this additional reason to get the basement organized, as I can't leave such a thing sitting in a box in the garage.

I've really moved on to healthier eating (and have lost a little over 4 lbs in a week!), but after paying a few bills this morning, I realized that I need to be doing both.

Now, if the pre-prepared healthier food weren't more expensive, this wouldn't be so hard... or if I could motivate to prepare my own food. Cooking healthy meals just isn't as easy as cooking really bad ones :)

At least most of my spending this moonth has been on consumables that will be better for me than the ones I bought last month.

I did show Mike how to find the books he wants on half.com, so he has several books coming in the mail soon for easily a third of the price he would've paid at Borders. He actually bought a couple that he wants to pass on to Andy after he's read them again.

I think we'll be grilling tonight to get rid of some of the meat Mike bought in January and froze... and I'll be eating some grilled veggie burgers.

I'm losing track of my spending again. Even though I didn't save as much as I'd hoped to, I did save a significant amount in Feb. I think it did really help to have to write it down, and it also helped me to plan spending a couple of days in the future, so I'm going to start checking in again. Are you still working on not spending, or are you on to the healthier eating?

This morning I bought groceries and spent about $50 -- very little food of substance on that list, a lot of thing like tortillas and hummus. I really do want to buy an elliptical machine, so I need to see if the prices are as low as they were in Jan, and I'm thinking that will be between $500 and $700. I don't have any other expenses planned. I think I'll make fajitas for lunch, and I have the food for that in the freezer, and then I'll make pancakes & bacon & eggs for the girls for dinner. Perhaps I'll make some w/ blueberries for myself, and then w/ chocolate chips for dessert!

Yesterday, I hit another trifecta of dangerous stores: Goodwill, Tuesday Mornings, and Trader Joe's spending a couple of hundred dollars. I know I didn't really need those cookie cutters, but they were so darned cute! I think we may need to make some elephant-shaped cookies together this summer.

Today, I made the mistake of going grocery shopping when I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner and spent well over $100 on vegetables and "healthy foods." Granted, now I have food that may actually help with weight loss instead of contribute to weight gain, but this is getting ridiculous!

The goal is to not step foot in any stores for the next several days to try to make up for this.

More Best Laid Plans. . .

Over $200 today. I think I suck at this -- AGAIN.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. . .

Friday there was a Gem & Jewelry Show, and I took the money I'd earned from a sale, and spent that. Saturday I didn't go to thrift stores for my usual treasure hunting. This was good, but instead I end up warehouse - store poor! $146 in bulk, and $56 at Kohls for a slide/film negative scanner. Sunday, Andy bought a $50 car battery starter thing, since last week he got stuck at DIA with a dead car battery, but I think I have to count that.

Tomorrow I'm planning to spend some Kohls Cash and use up the store credit I have. I'm going to buy a $400 Roomba robotic vac, but it will end up being $85 out of my pocket because of discounts & promotional Cash. I'm wondering if this can help me out in the basement and the upstairs, potentially keep me from needing to hire the cleaners to do those floors too, which makes the $85 look ridiculously cheap! A friend recommended this to me, so I'm trusting that they've improved, and I expect that it will work well.

I'm also meeting a woman about a dressform for $75, which I hope will help me out with all of the clothes I want to tailor. Is this crazy? So, I'll add it up. Including Friday, this brings me to $412 in four days. SEE??? Okay, now I'm over my daily average. That hasn't happened for a while. Hopefully from here I'll be better, right? It's all of that "very little" spending I did last week! Rebound spending!?! I will be better.

It will feel good to pay such small bills this month, about half of the usual. That will make me feel motivated to continue the trend. After tomorrow. :)

We haven't been paying much attention so far this month/week. I know we've gone out to eat for a few meals, but for the most part, we've been trying to bring lunches to work like we did last month.

I've stayed away from my "dangerous" stores, but have picked up a couple of little things at others. I've only truly had two days of no spending this week.

I'll hit the reset button for next week and try to pay more attention to where my money is going. I think just being aware of it causes me to spend much less.