Heading torward the end of the month.  I’ve mentioned in my last several recap posts that I feel like a lot of my decisions for this month were MAJOR fails.   I have to remind myself that I’m doing “low-spend” here and not “no-spend.”  I’ve definitely become much more mindful of purchases.  Before I started this in June, I often would buy whatever I thought we needed right away, and no sweat…if I had to, I’d take the $ out of our emergency fund.  Not a good idea, right?  I’m no longer doing that.  I’m spacing things out and planning ahead.  I do think I want to try a no-spend month

Today is money day, when the “big” money arrives. 🙂  I paid the mortgage, cell bill and car payment.  HOA and city utilities were recently paid on auto-pay.  I bought $200 worth of power a few days ago, so I’m not taking that $ out of this check.  As mentioned in another post, I spent $89 on some Thinx.  I ordered another birthday gift for D…a really nice webcam/mic.  That was $60 after tax.  His other gift arrived today…$33 for a trio of Amiibos he really, really wants.  Like I’ve said before, I don’t think I’ve EVER spent under $100 on birthday gifts for a kiddo!  We’ve been tempted to get him a better drone or a tablet (so I can have my iPad mini back…that’d be nice!) but really, he doens’t neeeeeed anything else so it’s all good.

Grocery shopping…$101 at Sam’s and $201 at Winco.  I spent over $600 last payday so I’m really doing well this time.  This includes enough milk, staples, snacks and meal ingredients to last a full 2-3 weeks when combined with what I have on hand.  I’m pretty stoked.  I found the burritos Tom loves for $1 less per package, and the huge cans of corned beef hash for $1.98 whereas they are $4 at Walmart.  I got six…kind of kicking myself for not stocking up even more.

I’m practically dying to upgrade my cell phone, since I can get one with a lot more storage and a better camera for about the same installment price we’re paying monthly.  I do have to pay tax on the new phone, which is about $85.  If I trade it in, I don’t get to keep my old phone.  If I pay it off for $124 (on top of $85 tax for the new phone), I can keep it and sell it.  Or if I wait till the end of October, I can keep it and sell it, and only pay that $85 tax on the new phone.   So if I were to shell out the $210 to get the new phone on its way, I could recoup all or most of that by selling my existing phone.  They seem to be going for $200-250 for 6s Plus 16gb, but mine has some deep scratches in the screen, so I probably am not going to get on the higher end of that range.  But really, the most frugal thing to do is deal with the lack of storage space and crummy camera, and not upgrade the phone just because it’s eligible.  It will be paid off in three months and if I keep it, our cell bill goes down $35 a month.  I think I might do that…I can always upgrade it in the future at some point.