Spending with my budget

So now that I have a budget, I have gone out into the world with my money and spent a little bit of it and so far I think I'm doing alright. The first thing that I've been doing is spending cash ... not using my debit card or writing checks (expect for paying bills of course) but actually using cold hard cash. I read some where that using cash makes you realize what you're actually spending.

And it makes sence when you stop and think about it. When you buy a $60 sweater and pay for it with a card, all you see really is a small piece of plastic and some paper that you're asked to sign. When you pay for the same sweater with cash, you have to pull three $20 dollar bills out of your wallet and hand it over to the clerk. Handling the money kind of makes you think about the other things that you could be spending it on. Like paying down debt or paying for the gas bill that month, or even putting the money into a savings account so that you can earn some interest on it.

Since I have such a small amount of money to spend on clothes I've decided that the time to reign in my expensive clothing habits. I have decided that I will only buy clothes when they are on sale. So today I had some extra time before I had to babysit so I went into American Eagle to see if they had anything that was on sale and cute. I managed to find a pair of my favorite style jeans on sale for $20 ... I don't know how much they are regularly but I do know that the other jean styles that were on sale were $30. So, since I was saving a little I decided that I would let myself get a shirt off the sale rack, hopefully for super cheap. The shirt I ended up buying was $15, but with a cardigan it's something that I can wear to work and can sex up a little to wear out on the town too. I may have spend almost my whole budget for the month today, but I feel like what I got was good stuff.

Also, I'm getting ready to pay off one of my smaller debts in full in the next few weeks. I am SO EXCITED!