No Spend

September and onwards

I have a lot of work to do on myself.

So much evaluation of life has been happening lately. How much I’ve been impulse spending, how much time I spend on social media, how little quality time I spend with my children and husband, how I work more than I’d like to. All of these things center around one thing, money.

The correlation is clear with impulse spending and how much I work. Where it gets less obvious is social media use and quality time. I often find myself exhausted and spent working second shift. Usually returning home from work at midnight, pumping and showering and then attempting to decompress with a little television has resulted in more occasions waking up on the couch in the middle of the night before getting up at 7am to do it all over again. All of this leading to a slow burn of exhaustion and overwhelm. This exhaustion doesn’t let me be fully connected with my family, this overwhelm usually leads to me “checking out” on the people around me by “checking in” to social media. And the cycle of frustration seems to continue.

My plan was always to reduce how many shifts I work with each child I have. But the fact remains that with every child I have my overwhelm has increased and my financial competence has decreased. I was well on my way to paying off our debt when I was pregnant with Cillian and then the siren song of convenience rang in my ears and drowned out that financial plan and I found myself no longer able to reduce my workload.

After making a series of impulse purchases last month. To the extend I could see Jordan’s eyebrows raise a little bit every time a pile of packages was deposited on our doorstep. I aimed to do a “No Spend September” this month to check in with my spending habits. I’m writing down every impulse purchase I seriously contemplated making and at the end of each week I’m going to deposit that dollar amount into savings. I am hoping to rebuild our emergency fund and check back in with my frugal side. I hope one day I can achieve a little more financial stability to find a way to be home with my children more before they are grown.

If any of this speaks to you I hope you join me. I know its already a few days into September and thats okay. The rules can be your own, I’m planning on only considering impulse purchases and things we “don’t need” and am attempting to seriously cut down on our grocery purchases as well. Write down what you resisted spending and put it in savings or towards debt. Check in with me on here or on Instagram. I can’t wait to hear about it!