Made it just fine another week. I think it gets easier as time goes on. I am able to leave behind my regular wallet and go in the store with just the grocery money. Leaving the back up debit card in the car assures me that I don't go over my budget, no matter what! I also got suckered into getting a pizza and bread sticks from Little Caesar one evening by Michael and we went for ice cream sundays at McDonalds another evening. I find that resisting the urge to go out when it would be the easiest way to feed the family after an evening spent at sport events has been huge and also necessary to the budget. My mom is leaving here in 10 days and I need to make sure I am prepared for these long evenings.

Here is what I bought this week:

...

I have such a love affair with travel. I grew up in Romania during communist times. I was young but to me growing up in a closed country made me aware of my wonder lust. You want the things you can’t have and being unable to go where I wanted whenever I wanted was part of who I was as a young adult. I never really connected money with travel. The simple fact that I couldn’t go somewhere because I wasn’t allowed made me think of traveling as a huge accomplishment in itself, regardless of destination, level of comfort or plans. Just to go somewhere was such a dream!

I left Romania at 17. It is my biggest and greatest accomplishment in life to date. I sometimes wonder if having children should be above that, but then...

This week was a little bit more challenging to stay on track. I prepared some smoked salmon dip for an open house and I also took my daughter shopping with me once, not really a good idea. She was good about keeping track of how much we spent but she is not necessarily a thrifty shopper... I have to take her with me more often so that she understands what it takes to stay on budget.

Tuesday I spent $7.92.

Wednesday with Melissa I managed to spend $79.02. We bought a lot of food!

On Saturday I got stuff for breakfast for tomorrow. I spent $3.93. I also ran out of coffee and I got some at Julie's Coffee for $5.49.

That was it for a grand total of $96.36! Yeah! That left me with a little over $3. I put that together with the...

I started Monday, April 1st 2013, with a very crisp $100 bill to which I designated it's own wallet. This is how I did:

On Monday I stopped at Costco and spent $23.38. I got only two things but were expensive. We bake a lot at home and I make my own granola, so the nuts are a staple. The croissants freeze well and the kids love them for breakfast. We did have some leftovers from Easter Sunday, so not much was needed right from the start.

On Tuesday, on my way home from an appointment, I passed by the Oberweis Store in Gurnee and stopped in to get some milk. It came to a whopping $5.08 because I did not have an exchange glass bottle. We used to have the milk delivered at home but we just don't drink enough of it to justify...