Frugal | October - The Final Numbers and a Public Declaration

October - The Final Numbers and a Public Declaration

Posted by Lynnae on November 1, 2007

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I’m not going to lie. October has been a rough month. Our income took a huge hit. We spent too much on eating out (most of that was before the income was lost). I was over budget on my grocery bill, even though my goal for the Reduce a Bill Challenge was to reduce the grocery bill (more on that tomorrow). I stopped tracking my spending mid-month. Yeah, it’s been a rough month.

It’s been a good month in other ways. Part of the reason the grocery bill was high is because I was building a stockpile of food at low prices. I’m hoping to see that reflected in November’s grocery budget. I threw a very frugal birthday party for my son, and he had a lot of fun. I finally cut out the YMCA membership, and today I canceled our Blockbuster Online membership. We started a business.

The biggest victory this month by far, though, was that we spent less than we earned, despite my husband’s loss of his job. That’s right. We spent less than we earned! (Everyone can do a cheer here).

Here’s the breakdown:

Income: $2338.95

Expenses: $2278.95

Difference: $59.81

I’d love to say I’m putting the extra toward my debt, but given our precarious financial position at the moment, we’ll be using it for food or something. And no, we won’t be eating out. After talking it over with my husband, November will be another month where we don’t eat out at all.

Despite not being able to put the extra money toward our debt, we did reduce our debt in October. I didn’t pay the Student Loan (it’s paid ahead, including the interest….don’t ask…frugal flop there), so I took the $100 that I normally pay on the student loan and added it to the $100 I normally pay on our credit card. I was able to reduce the credit card balance to $1550. That brings the total I’ve paid on our debt since mid-June to $696. Not nearly as much as I’d like it to be, but we’re not going backwards. Our total debt in June was $9233, and now it’s down to $8537.

That brings me to my public declaration. Brip Blap started the Public Declaration meme and tagged Paidtwice, who in turn tagged me. So what’s my public declaration?

Despite the fact that we have no income at the moment, we will not incur any new debt.

I may not be able to reach my debt-free goal nearly as soon as I’d originally planned, but we will not go backwards. We may have to pay it down one dollar at a time, but we will do it.

My brain is tired after all of this number crunching, so I’m not going to tag anyone specific. I encourage you all to think about your goals and post them publicly, though. I never thought blogging and putting my goals out there for the world to see would be such a huge help in meeting our goal. But it’s been a bigger help than I ever could have imagined.

So if you have a goal and you’re reading this, you’re tagged. Write a post, and link back to Brip Blap’s post, and let’s support each other in meeting our goals!

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Comments

14 Responses to “October - The Final Numbers and a Public Declaration”

  1. paidtwice on November 1st, 2007 3:11 pm

    Yay for spending less than you earned!! That is awesome! :)

    I love your declaration. Told you that you would come up with something good.

  2. Mrs. Micah on November 1st, 2007 3:22 pm

    Overall, you came out ahead, which is the most important! Congrats. :)

  3. boomeyers on November 1st, 2007 5:29 pm

    Who can blame you for going over budget? I end up doing it every month! And I am counting on you not to incur any new debt, cause this has been my goal and I have been a huge failure at it!!! You can show me how! :) You can do it, I am rooting for you!!

  4. Lynnae on November 1st, 2007 6:17 pm
    Thanks for the encouragement! And boomeyers, the pressure is on now! :)
  5. Brip Blap on November 1st, 2007 7:24 pm

    That’s actually a terrific declaration. That one tiny thing - not incurring any new debt - will make a huge difference in your life, and my idea all along has been that making a public declaration will make it a stronger goal. I know you’ll do it - you were obviously committed to doing it even before you posted this, so just keep it up :)

  6. NKUWTJ on November 2nd, 2007 6:58 am

    I love the way you pointed out that you will not go backwards! Excellent way of looking at things.

    Dh said this morning that he is blah about having our debt….I am going to tell him that on one of the blogs I read how a “Very Wise Lady” (Lynnae :)) stated that “I may not be able to reach my debt-free goal nearly as soon as I’d originally planned, but we will not go backwards.”

    That statement is very powerful!

  7. Lynnae on November 2nd, 2007 7:03 am
    @Brip Blap - Thanks. Yes, I was committed to it before, but this month it got a whole lot harder. Kind of made my resolve stronger. Sometimes it helps to get angry. :)

    @NKUWTJ - Wise, eh? I like it! And thank you. Sometimes it’s discouraging to know that unless some miracle happens we’ll be so far off from our original goal. But I guess part of life is adjusting your goals to fit the changes you go through in life. :

  8. Lisa Knight on November 2nd, 2007 9:13 am

    Love Budget 101. I started developing my un-grocery list using the website! It feels good to say that I haven’t bought hot chocolate mix or biscuit mix (unless it was a loss leader & really cheap!).

  9. Ryan Healy on November 2nd, 2007 9:52 am

    I too am thinking about cutting the YMCA membership. I haven’t been exercising as much these last couple months of my wife’s pregnancy…

  10. Erin on November 2nd, 2007 8:21 pm

    Lynnae,
    You all did AWESOME!!! Really. You had a rough month, but really came out ahead.

  11. Lynnae on November 2nd, 2007 9:05 pm
    @Lisa Knight - Un-grocery list…I like that. I’m going to adopt that strategy, I think.

    @Ryan - That’s why I finally stopped, too. Well, besides the fact that we had to drop something. I just wasn’t working out as much as I’d planned to. And as convenient as the YMCA is, there are free ways to exercise…

    @Erin - Thank you. I was pretty surprised that we actually came in spending less than we earned. We’ll see what happens this month. We still have a little bit of an emergency fund before we have to hit the retirement account. My husband has a few opportunities on the line. It will just be interesting how it works out. He may end up with 2 part time jobs. LOL

  12. Kandy on November 5th, 2007 10:56 am

    I honestly don’t know how you do it. We’re struggling so much with the loss of my income…if we lost Justin’s…*shudder*

    WTG on spending less than you earned though :)

Trackbacks

  1. November Reduce-a-Bill Challenge - The Grocery Bill, Part 2 | beingfrugal.net
  2. Carnival of Debt Reduction #112 - Making Progress Edition | Cash Money Life

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