Essentials Only Month: Halfway Mark

Oh, Essentials Only Month. You've been a tough pill to swallow.

See? An organized pantry is a happy pantry. 

As promised, here's the first of my weekly updates on our EOM progress. This time around - our third EOM - has been so much harder for some reason. We I chose to do it this month because both A and I were traveling for work (decreasing our out of pocket meal costs significantly) and had so much planned that I thought it'd be easy to resist the temptation to spend extra money. So far, some of that is true - we've been so wide open that we haven't had a lot of time to shop for "fun." But we've also been apart for about 6 of these 14 days, making the days we have spent together much more tempting to go out to dinner or pick up food rather than cook. Sigh.

TOTAL BUDGETED: $225
TOTAL SPENT AS OF 3/14: $139.03 (a large chunk of this was gas)
MONEY LEFT FOR 2 WEEKS: $85.97

If we hadn't eaten out a few times (small meals, mostly lunch), we would be in much better shape right now. But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Our groceries have been a tiny sliver of this (about $17) because we had so much in the pantry.

I can already tell you that we're going to go over our goal limit, because I will be driving out of town this weekend to see my mom and stepdad at the cabin, and next week to see A at a golf tournament, and gas is not cheap, my friend. But at least we're not spending money on other stuff in addition to all of this, right? Right??

Besides, the pantry, fridge and deep freeze are already in better shape. So there's that!

xo
KH