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It’s Friday!  That’s supposed to mean another edition of the 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week series.

So all week I’ve been racking my brain, trying to think up any ways that we saved money this week.  But the fact is that we didn’t.  We totally fell off of the wagon.

We’re now halfway through our #yearofno.  It’s probably natural that we’d have a rough time sticking to the plan at this point.  We’ve been so good for most of the year.  But old habits die hard!

Just because those old habits have reared their ugly heads doesn’t mean that we are giving up.  I might need to reread my own advice about motivation, but I promise that we’ll be back to our saving ways next week.  We’ve worked too hard to give it up now!

Instead of sharing the ways we saved this week (since, frankly, there aren’t any), I’m going to be honest and show you 5 ways that we blew it this week.  If you’d prefer to read some advice on saving money, you can look back through 40 weeks worth of the 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week series.

Otherwise, read on and see my confession.

5 Ways We Blew Money This Week

5 Ways We've Blown Money This Week. We've had a great year of spending little and saving a lot of money. But this week didn't go so well. Check out what went wrong and what you can learn from periods of blowing money.

Convenience foods.  Yep.  My biggest weakness is hitting the drive thru for a quick meal or grabbing a treat for the kids after a hot game.  While we didn’t hit a drive thru, we did stop for a meal after a long day once.  And we grabbed ice cream for everyone both to celebrate the end of a softball season and to drown our sorrows after a messy problematic game.

Even though I know better than to think that it’s “just a few dollars”, I allowed myself to go back to that type of thinking.  You can’t use that line of thinking with a debit or credit card.  Unless you’re using cash in an envelope so you can see the money disappear, you shouldn’t allow wasteful spending like this to creep up.

Animals.  We’re getting our livestock ready for the fair, which is always an extra expense.  My mistake here was not properly budgeting for the extra money that these animals take away from our cash flow.

loaner goat

Another mistake was not realizing that we are in over our heads when it comes to the time and money that livestock projects require before it was too late this fair year.  The kids learn a lot from showing these animals at the fair, but it’s just not working for us anymore.

Gifts.  I love giving gifts, but sometimes I go overboard.  This month we’ve had Father’s Day, our son’s birthday, and a few other birthday gifts to cover.  I should have shopped earlier and looked for better deals.  Instead, I took 4 of the kids shopping at the last minute and grabbed several things without considering the budget for those gifts.

Communication and Encouragement.  Hubby and I stay on the “no spend wagon” better when we encourage one another.  I think that we’ve seen each other spending a little more freely this month, and it’s almost given the other one a crazy kind of permission to spend, too.

We need to remind ourselves and each other of our #yearofno.  We aim for accountability without accusation.  It isn’t a perfect system, but we really don’t argue a lot about money.  We’ve found a way to talk about it in a way that encourages each other (for the most part).

It might be easier to turn a blind eye to our own spending (as well as each other’s spending), but all that does is make us worse off.

Work the Plan: Goals for the Week

Lots of driving.  I’m not sure that there is a lot I could have changed about this one, but we’ve spent a lot of money on gas this month.  The kids have a lot of extra camps, extra ball games, and other activities in June.

One way I could improve this is by shopping around for gas.  I was upset to fill up in one town and find gas 40 cents cheaper the next town over.  A quick check of a website like Gas Buddy could have saved me a chunk of change.

That’s 5 of the ways we blew money last week.

This wasn’t a fun post to write, but I want to stay honest with my favorite readers.  Hopefully this will turn around our spending and we’ll get back on track with our #yearofno!

As a parting gift, I’ll share some advice for saving money on groceries.  Be sure to check out this new post for tons of tips that will save your grocery budget.  It’s much more than just couponing!

Grocery shopping on a budget

Your turn.  My weakness is clearly convenience foods.  What tends to be your weakness?