Radical Budgeting

I really suck at sticking to a budget. It's hard when one income varies from month to month - when we have a lot of money coming in, we spend a lot of money, but when we don't have a lot coming in, we don't have the extra to cover the deficit. I am so tired of having a big bill come up and not be able to pay for it, then we have to pay with a credit card and make payments with interest. I really want to build at least a little bit of an emergency fund this year so that when we have a car repair, or a vet bill, or a house repair, we can just pay it.

So I was reading through some articles posted on Facebook from a few different budgeting sites, and I read about something that really sounded interesting to me. A woman said her family saves money in the months of January and February by selling items they don't need anymore. The only money they spend on any non-bill items comes from the sales of stuff from their house. Any money they would have usually allotted to groceries, clothes, entertainment, eating out, etc is put into savings. This way they declutter and build up a little savings at the beginning of the year.

I love this idea! I am very interested to see if we can do this. So we have decided to try it in the month of February and see how it goes. We are going to try and live on the cash my husband gets for a Wednesday night gig every week ($50) and whatever we can make for selling stuff like outgrown kids clothes (and my outgrown clothes that are now too big) and toys the kids don't play with anymore. Basically all the crap piled in my garage right now. So if you ask us to go out to eat or go shopping during the month of February we will probably say no. But if you want to come over for dinner or cards we will be happy to have you. I suspect trying this may change more than just our budget...so we'll see how it goes. I'll update each week on how we are doing.