Tis’ the season! This past weekend, my husband and I sat down to do the annual exam of our household budget and savings plan for the year ahead. We thoroughly look at our budget and realistically examine potential expenses and find ways to cut/save money for the upcoming year.

The cost of living increase does make it difficult when it comes to trying to save and budget. We have a firm understanding of our budget and update an excel doc we’ve been using for years to see what has changed. One of things I cannot believe is how much our grocery and food spend has increased over the years. It’s slightly sickening!

Having a detailed awareness of your budget can allow you to prepare for future expenses (i.e. school, home projects, home maintenance issues, etc.), reconsider what items are truly important and remove things that waste money all while challenging yourself to become a better saver.

It’s that time of year again! A time that I actually love – looking ahead to a new year and setting goals and realistic expectations for our household. Budgeting is something we rely HEAVY on! When things fall off the rails, we look back and see what went wrong and how we can improve it as best we can.

Coming off a holiday break and Christmas can be a tough way to end the year in the budgeting department. That’s why I’ve decided to jump on the NO SPEND JANUARY train again this year.

If you missed it, I blogged about it last year – it was a huge success and a great reset for us!

It’s February 1st, which means the NO SPEND JANUARY challenge is officially complete. Today I’m sharing a recap of the challenge – some of the successes and some of the failures/updates that need to be addressed. I might even extend this into February and March, which are two more months where there isn’t much going on and we should utilize this in order to save BIG TIME

I know I mentioned this before, but summer can get crazy and the budget is even more difficult to figure out. The kids are home, spending ticks up a little bit – i.e. grocery budget increase, pool maintenance, having family and friends over, cookouts, parties and going to parks, on little trips, etc! These winter months are the perfect time to try to save as much as we can to make up for a variable summer.

It’s that time of year again! A time when we sit down and thoroughly review our budget and set financial goals for the year. I will share more on goals and something new I just started for budget tracking, possibly later this week or next (because it requires it’s own post). In the meantime, I wanted to share a challenge with you, one you can join too – NO SPEND JANUARY!

You heard that right – N O S P E N D J A N U A R Y. This will be hard, it will be so annoying, but honestly it’s the reset we need. We didn’t entirely accomplish our goals from last year. Some modifications were made, unexpected items popped up (as they always do) and we focused hard on investing – which has been amazing and sometimes I forget that’s where our savings is!