tightening the belt

For the month of May I put myself on a spending diet. I was inspired by my friend Cami who blogged about her amazing spending fast during March. I am not amazing at controlling my $ like Cami, but I did make some noticeable strides at decreasing the number of times I enter my PIN.

The only guidelines/goals I made were to:

• no Target
  
• no Walmart
  
• do 90% of the grocery shopping at Aldi
  
• no Trader Joes
  

How did I do? Well before May started I did stock up and bought a month's worth of diapers at Target. In all honesty I did have to go to Target once because I ran out of the overnight pullups E still needs after the first 3 weeks. And we went to Walmart once to get ant poison and E some new socks. But seriously, I am so proud of that because previously I was going to Walmart about every 7-10 days and Target maybe every 5-7 days. And you know how it is, a trip to either store easily, mysteriously, ends up costing $50-100. So my wallet is definitely thanking me for NOT doing that this month.

The biggest surprise was I didn't miss Walmart. I mean it's a really nice Walmart here, as nice as I've ever seen, but it's 20 minutes away from my house and it was complicating my life to travel that far for the bulk of my groceries. Not to mention how glamorous a life it is to take a 1 and 3 year old to SuperWalmart, considering little kids like to sit in a cart for over an hour....right. Nah, don't miss those tantrums.

But Aldi is the nearest grocery store, it's nice, the clientele isn't scary (*cough St. Louis, cough*), and it has the cheapest, most beautiful produce in town. We were eating well! And I was pleasantly surprised that I even liked some of the Aldi brand stuff I was dreading having to eat, like their bread and cereal. However, I do have one complaint. 1-Ply Toilet Paper! Need I say more?!

The other 10% of groceries were things like cilantro, or diet caffeine free house brand cokes that Aldi doesn't sell. Then I just went to the local chain grocery store, Harris Teeter. Still hate that name.

And I am still missing my Trader Joe's but now the next time I go, I will remember it is a treat to buy special food there, not a given part of our groceries.

What did we do with the "extra" money? Well, we're saving it for this summer when Brian's off and not getting paid. But we also had some fun on a date to the Cheesecake Factory and we bought Elliott a trailing bike. (You know it's only 1 wheel and you attach it behind a grown up's bike.) He LOVES it! He's in heaven on that thing. One afternoon when we might have gone to Target for "fun," we went on a family bike ride. And it was WAY more fun.

So I wasn't perfect, could have done better, but I'm proud of the spending-less-and-liking-it-more habits I made last month.