So we have gone on the cash diet. And it is TOTALLY working. You all know it isn't me that spends... it is my dh. Well, I gave him cash for everything this last two weeks and he has enough for gas this week and still has $7 play money. And I just made a menu and bought the groceries for this next week with coupons and the cash that I had. We haven't spent a penny on the cc, we haven't used the debit card for anything except parking at the airport.

I feel very successful at the moment. :heart:

Val

sweet

that is really cool.
have you just switched to a cash based budget?

Good for you :)

I am going to be doing that for groceries and household supplies since that seems to be our biggest oops category.

Yep... I pay all the bills, put them in the registar to get paid (online by the bank), take the rest out in cash, divy up what we need for gas, and tell Don what that will be, and then the rest is what it is.

So far our budget has been stock up on groceries every two weeks ($100) with a $30 budget for the next monday, $80 every two weeks for Don's gas, and $55 for mine (with a $20 just in case in this catagory), and then $20 play money for Don and I keep the rest. (Which isn't much because I have been putting some extra on credit cards, so I usually end up with about $80 for misc and goodwill clothing runs, etc.

Right now we need sheets SO badly it isn't even funny... we have a king sized sheet on our new (to us) handmedown queen sized bed and it keeps falling off. lol... Logan only has one sheet for his crib and he threw up on it a few nights ago, so while it was in the wash I covered his bed in a blanket from the couch... which now needs to be washed as well. lol! But those will wait for payday too. :D And they have. We haven't even thought about doing much else.

It really is going to be successful. We have 3 different copays to catch up on this paycheck (totaling just over $140) and then we have the window of the car which broke (of course, the drivers side window, which will be $77 + labor, which means $100) so we won't be putting extra this paycheck, but we have been... and not using is more important that putting on extra for us at this point. If we get to the not using, the extra payments will come. :)

Val

that is really cool.
have you just switched to a cash based budget?

Yes.... we had tried it before, but we didn't have enough for what we were doing... so it didn't matter if we had it all in cash, when the cash wasn't enough to pay for food and gasoline together. You know? Now the cc's are in the drawer of the desk and not in Don's wallet... and the cash is in the wallets instead. Working great so far... we just need to stick to it. It is always the second week waiting for payday that is hard. Like from now to thursday he would often have used his gas money (when we were using debit cards) and not even known it, so we would go over for small stupid stuff, costing us $8 in fees and whatever he got on the overdraft credit card.... which sometimes was gas and then another purchase for a Monster... costing us $12 instead of $3 because the $8 fee! I put a stop to that, and just gave him cash. And honestly, he has been great with it. He hasn't even ASKED to go out this week.

He had this horrible habit of asking to go out to eat in front of the kids... who can say no to 3 people they love begging for something? Yeah... pissed me off. Yesterday he mentioned Ice Cream in front of Cyan and I made him take it out of his petty cash. ;) He was wize about it and got one huge milkshake for us all to share, only costing him $3.80... and I doubt he will do that again. lol!

I am MEAN right now. Mean chicken mommy, bad stingy wife... I even was glad to see my son leave after listening to him jump up and down about going for the past week. lol! (he was sick of the rain and wanted to go swimming, so he couldn't wait to get to MI... apparently he has been in their pool for the last two days.)

Anyway... mean mean mommy.

Val, pm me your addy please.

That sounds great! We have not quite done it yet. But I want to. We really don't have enough coming in, still, so that makes it frustrating. (Waiting by the phone for them to call him for the interview!)