Selective Spend Summer - Update #4

I can’t believe this is supposed to be my final update for the summer. And for my Selective Spend Summer series, it will be. But I think I’m going to keep these monthly updates going because they’ve been really helpful for both AJ and I to see where we are spending the bulk of our money month after month. Anyway, let’s get into where we finished up August at. As a quick recap, let’s look at the numbers from July:

Clothing: $395.00

Food: $930.00

Home Décor: $370.00

July was a really rough month for us, in particular around eating out. So we really focused hard in the month of August to cut back. And we definitely did. Let’s see where we ended up:

Clothing: $240.00

Food: $596.00

Home Décor: $63.00

Let’s look at the percent change from July to August

Clothing: -$155.00, 39% decrease

Food: - $334.00, 37% decrease

Home Décor: - $307.00, 84% decrease

So so SOO much better! We also had two major things in August that we had to prioritize so everything else needed to be cut back on. A wedding shower we hosted for my brother and his fiancé, and redoing our deck. We really wanted to be able to pay for both out of our regular monthly budget. With that, I only purchased one thing that was the on the original “pre approved” list: A seam ripper. Very exciting stuff, but I really needed one in order to mend a pair of AJ’s shorts.

What I bought that WASN’T on the list was only 3 things: a paid of Levi’s wedgie jeans for me, a pair of leopard printed boots for me, and 5 small planters (similar here, here, and here). Every item I purchased was on sale during the annual sidewalk sale that the stores in downtown Lake Geneva put on each year, so I definitely saved some money, but none of the items were anything I NEEDED. I purchased 5 planters because they were part of a 5/$25 deal and I ended up using 2 of them to plant houseplants in and then give away as prizes during my brother and future sister in law’s wedding shower for the game we played.

Even our eating out was really great last month. I’d say about $500 of the total we spent was from eating out with friends. I had 3 girl’s nights dinners, 1 brunch with old friends, and 1 brunch we had with friends. The other $96 was split between Starbucks and a few random fast food nights AJ and I had. But we feel REALLY proud of that.

I said at the beginning of this summer that I wanted to see how this challenge went because we had some big financial goals to meet and I’m still reflecting on how this summer went, where we missed and where we were strong. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I think I’m going to keep these monthly updates going.

So for today, I’m going to end my post here but I am going to take the next week to reflect on where we were strong and where we fell short and then talk about the rest of the year and our goals so be sure to check back next Wednesday! Plus, I think there are some correlations to my version of 75 Hard that I could add in here as well.