Frugal February - Failure?

If at first you don't succeed, DON'T GIVE UP!

That's what I'm taking away from Frugal February now that I'm reconciling all of our bills and statements to figure out the total spending for the experimental month.

We had some....hiccups, I guess you could call them. Some things, like our semi-annual car insurance bill that is due in February just couldn't be helped, so I didn't even count that. I did, however, check around to find out if we were getting the best rates possible, and we are (so that's good).

I felt like we really did sacrifice on many occasions...I can't tell you how familiar we are with PB& J. I'd be embarrassed to tell you how many we ate this month! There were so many days of Brandon taking left overs to work instead of hitting up Chic-fil-A. I clipped coupons and matched them with sales. I tried to stay to my list. We ate our pantry almost empty, but then had to restock it. But even then I was focused on buying things for recipes, not just to buy them. Only once did we go out to eat (and that time, with a coupon!) just because we didn't want to cook or clean.

Here's the thing...life happens. We spent more on gas because this month included two trips to Columbia and one to Hendersonville to take care of my parents and pick the girls up from their grandparents' house...We had a few opportunities open up for us to minister to others and that included buying them lunch or coffee. I know it didn't have to, but in these instances it just did. My camera was broken and instead of missing out on the lives of our small children any longer, we decided to fork out the money to get it fixed (after researching all the options, of course). I hosted a baby shower for one of my dearest friends...These things all add up, I guess.

I'm not going to beat myself up about it. Really, I'm not. I'm not even going to declare this month, "Money Saving March" or "Mo Money in My Pocket March" or anything else like that.
But I am going to try to make more small adjustments in our spending so that we can save and give more in the future.

So long, Frugal February. Although you were only 28 days, you felt soooooooo long.