I can hardly believe that it has already been one year since a traipsed around store after store with my mother-in-law on black friday.  Of course this year will be no different (sans mil).  Even though I vow every year I will never do it again, there is some sort of magnetic force that draws me back.  I just cannot stay away from Black Friday.

This year I’m getting an even earlier start.  I found this awesome website http://www.blackfriday.info/ that lets you browse the Black Friday ads and even make lists for the things you want to buy.  Then it organizes your list by store and has the stores hours listed right there so you can plan your morning accordingly.  Although, this year some stores are opening at midnight and others at 3, 4, and 5 a.m. so I’ll be lucky if I get any sleep at all.  Oh well, sleep is for losers right?

Who’s with me?  You better get started.

*photo credit: www.nataliedee.com

Well we are dealing with a small setback this month.  I was tempted to start this post talking about how we have failed this month but I couldn’t let myself admit defeat.  The reason is if I do that then I will just give up all together.  No, we are not defeated we are just having a small setback and we need to dust ourselves off and start right back up again.

What happened is I went back to school along with the fact that there is some pretty heavy stuff going on in my family right now and it’s taking some time to adjust.  I just haven’t been able to get it together enough to do my regular grocery shopping, so our fridge looks like a bunch of bachelors live here.  We’ve been eating out like crazy.  I swore I was gonna go grocery shopping today but that didn’t work out either so I’m gonna try again and go tomorrow.  Starting with getting a good nights sleep tonight so I can wake up early, take a shower and get my butt out of the house.

The school schedule has been rough because I go Monday and Tuesday night, and then my husband goes Wednesday night.  So it’s definitely taking some getting used to as far as cooking dinner and that sort of thing.  Going to school after you have kids is a whole new experience.  It’s  certainly interesting trying to do homework when a two year old is demanding your constant attention.

So, yes, we have spent extra money on eating out this month and there was the little incident yesterday where my car was towed and I had to pay $135 to get it out.  Yep, we all live and learn right? 

However, even though we didn’t follow our budget exactly we have still kept up with all our other budget cuts and we have not bought anything on credit.  That is major.  I am disappointed that we were not able to pay as much as we wanted towards are debt this month but I am so proud that we have gone the entire 6 months without charging anything to a credit card.  That alone is amazing and we plan to keep it that way.