Seriously, is this how frugal people have been living all along?

(With regard to this whole "keeping track of how much I spend each week" thing)

Why didn't anyone tell me how easy this was? Why didn't I do this before? Did I do this before and let it slip? I have no idea- all I know is, all of a sudden, sticking to my budget is insanely easy. Case in point- the Cabbage Patch Baby.

I have been promising my 3 y/o a Cabbage Patch Baby since the day he started potty training. Well, the day had finally come when he was really, truly potty trained, and that meant it was time to visit the toy store. So we went to Toys R Us, and then Target, and finally found the perfect baby, who looks like this:


Except he's a boy. His Cabbage Patch Kid name is "Andreas Reynaldo" but Mikey named him "Bussy" as a tribute to buses, I suppose. He's very cute and pees in his diaper, much to the grotesque delight of my two little boys.

Anyway, Bussy ran us 15 bucks, along with the 5 more I spent on "supportive little brother Matchbox cars" for Max. This whole adventure took up 95% of dinner time, so we went through the drive through on the way home (12 bucks). The whole day cost 34 dollars, including tax.

Typically, I would have ignored this day and gone on to spend my allotted 75 dollars at the grocery store, but now that I was able to quickly jot this all down, I did, and I subtracted it from my grocery budget. When I went grocery shopping last night, I was aware of this, and only bought the bare essentials (milk, bread, fruit) and spent 24 dollars. I got gas (63 dollars out of the allotted 75), so I still have money left for the week. This is good. Real good. Plus, all this math. I love it!

Today is payday, so tonight I will be paying down some more credit card debt. One more month and this year is 3/4 of the way finished! I can hardly believe it.