Intentional Spending – February

Oh my gosh! Where has the time gone? It’s been over a week since my last post. Things have been a little hectic – work has been busy, I have wedding planning going on, more renovations to be done, appointments with all sorts of doctors and so much more. I quite enjoyed these post last year when I was doing them do I want to start them again.

Here is my list for my February Pay

My expenses and miscellaneous items are things I know I will need to spend this month. Additional items will be things that I want/need but not right now. They are things that I will keep an eye out for but won’t go out of my way to purchase. I don’t have much in my additional spend. My wardrobe is condensed enough that I don’t need much more and I pre-purchased things that I wanted/needed which has cut down on impulse spending. I’m pretty happy with thee list. Whilst it seems like there is a lot, most has already been saved like the money for New Zealand and the wedding.

My intention with doing all this is twofold – I want to be more mindful of what I’m purchasing and I want to save more. My savings goal is to create an emergency fund. Whilst my fiance and I have savings, we don’t have anything dedicated to an emergency fund if one of us wasn’t able to work for a period of time or anything else that can happen unexpectedly.  In 6 months I’ll have paid off the wedding and my course so I’ll have nearly an extra $1000.00 a month

I want to be smarter with my money and make it worthwhile to save. I want to rely less on credit and I want to think more before purchasing. That’s what bought on the idea of these types of posts  in the first place – to try and foresee things I need and allocate funds to them. I read an interesting way of saving money and it was to never buy anything when you think of it and instead to write it down and leave it for a month. I’m really intrigued by this idea and I think it’d be a really good exercise to partake in but I know that my downfall is usually food/eating out so it’s quite hard to wait a month before doing that.

Another thing I want to do is get in front of my pay, so be able to spend last months money when the new month comes in. At the moment I get paid for the month on the 15th so technically I’m being advanced two weeks worth of pay. Whilst it’s fine, if I were to leave I would owe the company two weeks worth of wages so my departure pay would be significantly reduced, potentially impacting my standard of living for a couple of weeks.

 

What are you financial goals for this month?