music, therapy, and me

A couple of months ago, I decided that I needed to be more money conscious about my extraneous spending, so I started an envelope system. I started with five envelopes - fast food, books, crafts, home, and miscellaneous. In the past four months, I have used this system to help me make decisions about spending in these categories. Let's do a little bit of an update on how this is working for me. Overall, I think it is going pretty well. I have spent my fast food envelope more than the other four, with the books envelope coming in second. I have spent a bit from the other three envelopes but have not come to end of the cash there. I have done less spontaneous shopping, and that is making a difference in my budget. Today is payday which means I am currently flush with money. That will only be sustained for a couple of days as bills will be paid, but I have enough money to get my envelope allowance to replenish my envelopes. Since I spent some of my account money on books and food this...

It is almost payday, so it is time to look at my current entertainment budget which I am monitoring through the use of envelopes. If you are not sure what I'm talking about, here is the link where I started my discussion. It is the first time for looking at my spending and getting things back to full envelopes. I spent all my fast food money and more than what was there this past pay period. I had two large food orders (one was benefiting the region's music therapy student association) which cleaned me out and cleared out much of my miscellaneous envelope as well. I just made a Thriftbooks order, so money has to come out of that envelope as well. The cash that is there will be put into my replenishment fund because I used my card for those purchases. I will take out less money from this paycheck to get me back to the amount that I keep for entertainment. I did not spend money on crafts this month. I did not spend money on my home this month. I did not spend money on the other ...