Frugal Friday

Today I figured out an excellent system for saving money on a birthday-celebration-slash-girls'-day-out with SisterFriend (p.s. happy birthday, again) and Tunan. It's a superb way to prevent frivolous spending and impulse-purchasing. Are you ready? Check yourself because you might not be ready for this.

-have your debit card expire in the current month
-don't receive a replacement card from the bank in the mail
-put your only credit card on ice (literally) because you paid off the balance and don't want to run it up again (pictured below...yep, credit card frozen...in snow...from my deck...making it too inconvenient to use - thanks, bffster, KakiBlack, for the idea!)
-forget to borrow husband's debit card
-don't carry cash
-use your last check at practically the first place you go, rendering yourself currency-free in a matter of minutes

There you have it. With the power of my proven system, you, too, can make it through a whole day out with your homedogs and not spend a fortune.

Really, I wanted to spend money today. And lots of it. Several times.

We went to the thrift store where I spent $16.04 on four blouses, a PERFECT case for my netbook ($.79 cents later...shut up), and a never-been-worn, still-retail-tagged Gilligan O'Malley bathrobe.

Our next stop was the Big Bullseye where a hungry Pretty Baby quickly dictated the purchase of some yogurt, in addition to the purchase of a requested item for Ma Luffin' Mayun. This is where my last check was written for something in the ballpark of about $10.00.

Okay, so I spent around twenty-seven bucks today. Not so bad. Yet had this perfect, completely accidental absence of currency not have taken place, I would have been a lot looser in my spending.

These are the items I picked up, carried around, and ultimately didn't buy at day's end:
-a CD
-a movie
-two lovely, matching pieces of wall art that would've looked great in my house
-a pair of jeans
-shoes
-a sweater
-two swanky, motion-sensored room air fresheners
-a budget organizer
-miscellaneous items to compile my own version of the aforementioned budget organizer
-Big Bird, Elmo, and Cookie Monster
-a sticker book

So I really was relatively frugal today. But I realized again it's still not always my first impulse to be a thoughtful consumer. I wanted so much more than I finally bought. It would've felt so good to have purchased away.

But, I tell you, it felt better to put the items down. I may have been impulsive in picking them up. No, there's no maybe about it. It was definitely impulsive. But carting them around in a buggy, remembering that my husband and I had set a spending limit for the day that we both deserved to see honored, thinking each item through as I wheeled up and down aisles, feeling it sink in that there wasn't one of the items that I couldn't live without, and even sensing that to bring the stuff home would be counter to what it is I'm trying to do around Quaint Cottage and within myself . . . there was nothing impulsive about that. It was a gradual build inside me to, as impulsively as I picked each item up, systematically find their places on the shelves, replace them, and walk away.

That felt good. It really did.

Would I have loved the stuff? Oh yeah, sure. Does it get me to where and who I want to be? Not so much.

Alas, here's to a pretty unintentionally frugal Friday.

I'll take it where I can get it.

Happy sifting!

P.S. Oh, and perhaps google should winnow their stuff once in a while. I wanted a picture of a checkbook down to it's last check (basically so I wouldn't have to get off my duff and snap a picture of my own), and came across Neil Diamond instead.

Um, yeah. I can see the connection. Can't you? . . .