I spent 5 more dollars!

 Yes, friends. Since posting this morning about how I'm going to try to "enjoy," I've already spent $5. And that doesn't even include my McD's breakfast. I know I love spending money on food and snacks so I hope I don't go too wild. I mean I probably will and just re-calibrate to a happier medium.

So yes, on a whim and feeling productive, I took 2 returns back to Dollar Tree with no receipt and the cashier happily exchanged it. Yay! I ended up with the 2 notebooks I bargained for and 5 snacks! Whoops. I haven't totally lost my mind, however. There was a mini bottle of sparkling gr-apple that I put back. But now I'm wondering why! 

I love sparkling juice!

Oh well. 

I'm proud of myself for loosening up the purse strings and for actually going to get the notebooks and for actually trying to exchange those items. I had decided to let the $2 go long long ago but I thought meh, why not!

I think the notebooks were probably 30% cheaper at Walmart, but I have been avoiding Walmart like the plague since I moved here. After a few big in-person hauls, it just became too much to bear. It would be a big trip of people, parking, and germs to save 60 cents.

So see I haven't gone wild completely. I'm not going to forget everything I've learned in my frugal journey. Just trying to breathe a little. 

And let's be honest, the plan was always just to save the big stuff for 2022 and beyond anyway, so this isn't totally out of the blue. 

I think I just forgot what I was trying to do. But I don't want to count any chickens just yet. 

All in all, today was a productive day money-errands wise. I had a lot of online stuff to do and it took nearly all day. And that's with doing a lot of it over the weekend when I had idle time. 

Mostly it was getting some of those credit card spends out of the way. I did 2 of the 3. Well, I guess I did the HOA payment on Jan 1 when it was due. But this week the transfer of funds to pay off the card happened so I made the payment. Yay! I'll be honest, I was quite tempted to wait for the Feb due date, but I figured the money is already in my account, and I've already logged in, there's no benefit to waiting other than just to keep my money a little while longer. 

So there will be quite a huge outflow of cash this month it seems. About $2k to reach these spends. Yeah, so maybe Brain was trying to digest the hemorrhaging. But, I am trying to space it out as best I can. 

Although I technically have the funds in an extra account, I still would like to have at least my first paycheck before paying anything else off. That said, I went ahead and charged $500 of utilities to Credit Card #2. I think by my best guess, that will be a Jan month charge with a Feb due date. Prayerfully, by that time, I will have had at least 2 paychecks in my regular accounts. Everything is so bone dry these days. 

Normally, I like to reset my accounts back to healthy but this year it's all a little anemic for the first couple of months.

So in past years, I've usually left a little cushion in accounts, and move over the extra quarterly to investing. This was probably the first 2 or 3 years I did that just because I wasn't mentally prepared for surprise expenses but COVID kind of gave me a little confidence that life was going to be very static.

Anyway, so at the beginning of the year, I like to pad my regular checking and savings with 1.5 months' expenses, so I have an easily accessible 3-month emergency fund. Or just for any big expenses. I don't know what you call it. I guess it's for big expenses pending no emergencies. 

Right now, I have $70 in my regular savings. And luckily yesterday I noticed my regular checking only had $200 in it and my next monthly transfer wouldn't get there until Feb 7..which is way after my $500 mortgage payment is due on the 1st.  See, when I have the cushion, this delay is not usually a problem. So yeah, I had to move money over from an already anemic Hub account before I get paid this month.

See what I mean, I took it too far, but it's okay. It's not as though I spent it, I just made it illiquid. So yeah, a lot of the next month or three will be shoring up cash accounts and managing big spends.

Stay tuned!