Frugal February Challenge

Welcome to the Frugal February Challenge!

For the past 5 years or so, I have been participating in a Frugal February Challenge. It all started when my husband and I decided to attempt to pay our house off in three years (Spoiler alert: we did it in two!) He was working a ton of overtime at his new job and after crunching the numbers, we saw we could easily do it if we threw every extra cent we made at the debt. While looking up money saving ideas on the internet, I found this fun notion of a “Frugal February” pop up again and again. Basically it is a low spend/no spend month and you can set the rules for your family. Some years we have been really strict and others have been less strict, but overall the challenge really helps you to refocus on paying off debt and living a frugal life style. **While you do get to decide how much money you will spend on food, entertainment, and extras remember this is supposed to be a challenge, so do not go too easy on yourself:)

This year, we are going to allot $300 dollars for groceries and $100 for everything else (like eating out, thrift store shopping, homeschool field trips, etc) I usually restrict my spending to just food for the month of February, but since we are only buying used items this year (another fun challenge!), we really have to make sure we stay ahead of the growth spurts and grab things as we need them. I also have a New Year’s goal of taking the kids on monthly outings by themselves, so this takes a moderate amount of money as well each month. Overall, I think $100 should be just enough to cover all of the extras, but still be challenging enough to make me more aware of my spending.

I will be blogging about my deal findings and money saving tips throughout the month, so come back and see how my family fares in our 2019 Challenge. **Hopefully the whining will not be too bad this year:)

If you would like to take the challenge with us, just comment below about the spending rules you are setting for your family this month and come back each week to give us updates!