I am personally not into the "no spend" month thing. I think balance is delicate and I don't see messing with the delicate balance we have achieved with our finances. Just to say why I usually sit these things out. (I could just see having a no spend month and then going hog wild the next month, and generally feeling out of whack).

That said, February is a naturally very frugal month for us. It's a short month and pretty much all I will be doing is working. Throw in that dh is working now too and seems to spend less money than ever while working. (Which is hard to do because he doesn't spend much in the first place).

In addition to all that, we actually have a pretty busy month already planned with free activities.

So I guess it's a good month to track our spending and see how it goes. That said, if something comes up, we will splurge and enjoy because it is expected to be a pretty low-spend month overall. We have already discussed going out to lunch Monday and I have no motivation to change that. It may be the last lunch date we can swing until summer, so we are taking advantage. (Since dh now works through the lunch hour, but he will have the summer off).

When I have tracked our daily spending (in blog) in the past I have shared what our dinners were on a daily basis. I will probably just go back to that format and will do that for the month of February.

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Doings:

There has been a gas station in our neighborhood with really cheap gas. Been paying $1.99 all month. So we had a really low spend gas month even though we drove out of town twice.

I didn't know ahead of time but we have a plastic bag ban starting January 1. Strangely we had been making some small changes to that end so didn't catch us too offguard. Overall we use the plastic grocery bags for everything. Dh does use re-useable bags at the grocery store but that was about it. We used the plastic bags for cat litter and household trash and so liked to keep getting the plastic bags. We switched at the grocery store several years ago though because they had financial incentives to do so. Anyway, I just happened to buy some re-usable laundry bags for travel. & when we were in Hawaii they had no plastic bags and so we bought some Target canvas bags that we had just decided to use at Target once we got home. In the end, after January 1, I put one of those bags each in our cars so that we always have a bag. I had used plastic bags for my lunch but dh had gotten a canvas bag for his job that I thought was perfect for work/lunch so had switched to that. Just random how we got the Target bags, the lunch bag, and the laundry bags within a couple of months of this big change.

For cat litter I have been just using whatever I could find. I told dh and the kids to keep cereal bags and produce bags for cat litter. I think I can make do with whatever we have laying around. But I expect that we will have to start buying plastic bags for the kitchen trash.

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The kids have a birthday party to attend at the park down the street today. I have been holed up at work for 7 days (took last Saturday off for our last comedy show in San Francisco, but then worked on Sunday instead). So I look forward to breathing some fresh air and getting some sun.

I had found an itunes gift card recently that I thought I had already re-gifted. I was surprised we still had it. In the end the gift card came from this family and we are going to re-gift it back. We don't have any apple products, do not use itunes, and they invited BM to this party rather last minute. He's not even really invited but more to entertain his best friend during the younger brother's party. So for all that, I am happy just to re-gift this back to them. (Plus the dad brought us this gift and the mom is throwing this party. Divorced couple). I Can't say I have ever re-gifted someone the same gift back before, but given the circumstances... I am just happy to be rid of it, and it's just a bonus that we don't have to scramble for a gift.