I love a frugal challange!

So yea, yours truly made a major faux pa this pay period.  Yea, I forgot to add in not 1 but two credit card payments!  In other words both payments of our only two credit cards.  One is open and one closed.  Thank the Lord I found it!  I was recording transactions from my grocery shopping trip and was feeling veeery smug knowing I had used only $287of the $400 I had budgeted.  Then I realize I had forgotten to subtract the two cc payments from our account.  WOOPS!  Well, everything turned out OK in the end.  I would like to say it was no big deal, but I would be lying.  It took what was left of my grocery money, as well as most of what we had in savings (Which wasn't much since we had to pay for a regulator for our cars power window last pay period SURPRISE!).  I am happy that we still have a little (very) in savings, but we are not touching it.  We pretend it isn't there.  (Sound of whistling..."What savings?").So now we are in a "No spend" phase for the next two weeks. 

I write about this, not to air my laundry, but to provide a point.  We knew going into this pay period it was already going to be tight.  I don't get paid days off.  I took an extra day off to help my daughter after the birth of my second grandson. 

Because of that knowledge, I was already going into my grocery shopping trip with the idea of spending only what I had to.  If I could make it, it didn't get purchased.  As a result, I had that left over money for sales later.  I was able to keep my grocery budget down even lower, and be able to take the loss of grocery money "reserves" because A) I keep a pantry.  Anything I already had at home, I didn't buy unless I was almost out.  B)  I am able to make a large variety of items normally bought at the store.  I made two exceptions to my tightfisted grocery shopping trip.  We like chips with our lunches, and, not knowing the outcome of my homemade yogurt, I bought some flavored yogurt. 

Now comes the fun part.... the prep.  Yesterday was a busy day.  I started early mainly cause I woke up early with my mind racing.  So I got up and got started.  I made hamburger buns, hotdog buns, two loaves of bread, 2 batches of homemade mayo; one for sandwiches and one for homemade ranch dressing  er..a.... plus the Ranch dressing(from scratch, no mix).  I also put up two quarts of tomato sauce and froze a lot of corn on  the cobb.  On the docket for Tuesday and Wed (my days off),are Pancake syrup, Bagels, English muffins, Shake and Bake mix and Whole wheat tortillas.  This morning it is banana bread from two bananas a little over ripe.  Once I do a cost analysis on the mayo and ranch dressing I will post it on here.  If you want the recipe, you can find it at www.thefamilyhomestead.com.  Look under the kitchen tab and she has lots of great recipes.

My point is this.  It is so much easier to face these surprise obstacles if you area already prepared for Murphys Law.  I am glad we were able to weather this without adding to our credit card bill, or losing sleep.  It is a better way to live.  Definitely.