Our cats Emma and Scooter curled up under our tree
How nice that December 1st came on morning I didn't have anything scheduled - so I took some time to add up our expenditures for the month of November using my new budget file and bean method (see previous posts for explanations if you are just following now).
We almost ended the month with 66 beans left, but then discovered we needed to buy dog and cat food, since we love our pets, we decided feeding them was important enough to spend all but two of our remaining beans. :-)
So on November 28, we were left with only 2 beans, but we managed not to spend beyond those two remaining beans on the two remaining days of November - it was tough, as we started to run out of some food essentials, but we managed, just for the exercise of it all! We did not go hungry, we just had to eat what was already in the cupboards - I'm sure there are some in other parts of the world that would appreciate such a luxury, the thought of this kept me focused.
One of the big rewards received for following through with this entire process? We spent $304 LESS than we did in October - YAY!!! So my ideas of intentional spending, but writing everything down and a handy visual with the beans, seemed to have worked - we came in $2 under budget and I'm pretty pleased, because it was quite the shoe-string budget. Now to duplicate this again for December.
There were actually more rewards and lessons learned during the process, but I will save that for my upcoming post - I will leave you all in suspense!
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