July Budget: "No expense day" edition

So we are onto August now and I'm desperately hoping that the marching forces of expenditure take a break for a couple of months and let us touch our targeted budget for the month. But before that happens I have to go through the painful process of slicing and dicing our expenditure for July and from whatever I know of it, it ain't gonna be pleasant.

We finished 157$ below our realistic budget and 527$ above (???) our targeted budget. We had about 1400$ worth of unexpected expenses this month. So I can blame them for this spike in our expenses. What I want to see in the coming months is, "whether there's really some such thing as 'unexpected expenses' or whether I should allocate a big chunk to unforeseen expenses. We'll see.

Anyway, right now I feel that I have got the magical key to bring our spending down. As I have mentioned earlier we have decided to observe at least 3 "no expense days" where we try to spend no money at all on that day. It was BEB's idea which I adopted in no time. It was surprising to see how many "needs" just disappear, when we just wait them out for a couple of days. Specially doing it on weekdays was so easy and it saved time too. Earlier we used to stop at the grocery shop on the way almost every other day, now I try to get all the groceries on the weekend and avoid going to store during the week. I found that it saves a lot of time, and that one ingredient wasn't all that necessary after all. Biggest advantage was that BEB didn't get a chance to fall for that unhealthy snack every other day. Earlier when we used to go to grocery store every other day, then more often than not we ended up getting those fried Indian snacks, just because BEB got the opportunity to buy it. Later on, he felt guilty about eating those unhealthy snacks. Now, by avoiding going to the store we have reduced the chance of getting it.

If you really want to cut down your spending, just try it once, try not to spend any money, and I mean ANY money that day. You will really see how much difference it makes to your bottom-line.