August was a whirlwind of a month.

This past weekend was a whirlwind of a weekend.

C’est la vie.

Right?

September is here and with that comes everything fall, including PSL (would you know I’ve never even had one!).

So, as you know, I did a no-spend August. I thought it was going to be difficult, but surprisingly, it wasn’t. As a matter of fact, it seems to have pushed me back into the early days of our marriage – frugality. It literally made me go through and really ask myself if I needed that thing I was after.

So, although I seem to be posting a bit more on the topic of finances, I thought you might like the inside scoop on how we function financially.

Cell Phones

Let’s start with this.

I don’t have a cell phone plan.

Shocker, I know.

In our current society, wi-fi is readily available at any given place – there’s even wi-fi at the parks in our city. Really, the only place I don’t have it is while I’m driving – which would be redundant anyways. So, why do I need a cell phone plan?

I have a used cell phone and I use the MagicJack app for phone calls. I can use iMessage for anyone who has an iPhone and anyone who doesn’t, has my TextPlus number that they can text me at. All of that is free and works great! As far as emergencies go, every cell phone can dial 911.

Food

One of the things Brian and I have lived by (more so Brian than me) is not spending money frivolously on fast food. I have splurged a bit more over the years since our budget isn’t so strict, but we definitely keep it to once or twice in a month.

Shopping

Ok, this is something that can be broken up into a few different categories, but for the sake of this post, I’m going to lump them all into shopping.

Two words.

Price. Match.

I used to go through the flyers and bring them to the store to price match. Now I can just pull up the flyers on the Flipp app and price match through there.

As far as clothes shopping goes, I buy a few key things at outlets, but otherwise, I’ll head to the nearest thrift store.

I have a closet full of furs and leather jackets – all from the thrift store. The most I paid for any of that was $35 for the mink fur.

One of my favourite pieces of furniture in my house is my beloved mint green swivel rocking chair. I found it at the local thrift store and it was in pristine condition. It was being sold for $14, but they were having a flash sale on the day I went and I got the chair for $7. For real. You can’t beat that. Except maybe if your mom sits in it and it flips her backward – sorry Mom.

Now, you’re probably all wondering if I spend all my savings on makeup from Sephora. The answer? No. I usually redeem my credit card points on Sephora gift cards, thus creating the ability to purchase some higher end makeup products.

Which brings me back to the whole reason for this post.

Last weekend was the Sephora VIB appreciation sale and I redeemed some credit card points for a Sephora gift card. I had fully planned on ordering everything in my cart.

Except.

I got home and opened my cart, analyzed if I really needed all of those high-end products and it suddenly dawned on me that I didn’t want to waste that money – even if it was a gift card. Every day of the sale I went back to my cart and asked myself if I really needed those items. You know what? I couldn’t answer. I just kept walking away from it.

So, the sale is over. My gift card is still sitting on my desk. My cart is still full. My life still carried on.

Sometimes we think that we need things to make us happy. When, although some things can make life easier, they won’t ever make you truly happy. I want to leave a legacy for my kids and grandkids…not a bunch of things attached to debt.

There are many other little tidbits like banking with no service fees, waiting for sales, etc. that we live by in our budget, but I think these are the main ones.