No-Buy November

Guys.
I was hit with a bit of humble pie over Halloween weekend, and it got me thinking about spending in general.

So, a little back story.
I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my dumb brick phone to a real, adult phone.
It was gold and shiny and beautiful.
I was nervous to upgrade because I can be on the clumsy side and I tend to drop my phone a lot.
Like, a lot a lot.
Or spill things on it. Such as a bottle of Chardonnay. #pouroneoutformyhomies

But alas, I pretended for a hot minute I was truly grown up with adult grippy hands and set off to get myself a glorious new phone. One that would allow me to not only hold a conversation without saying, "wait a minute, I can't really hear you," or stream music AND download the Instagram app, or use emojis.

I know. These are all things I couldn't really do with my brick phone.

I call it my brick phone because it is literally the weight and structure of a brick because it includes some sort of military grade case that is screwed in place.
Not water, nor dropping, nor drunken escapades could damage this thing.

And I've been happy as your mom's clam for two years with it.

Until I got my new phone.

And realized what I was missing.
And then I was all, "pssshaa, this brick phone is shit, I can't believe I ever used it" and tossed it aside like a bad habit.

So here I am with my fancy new phone with it's fancy camera and plenty of storage and emojis.

For a week.

Until I fucking smashed the thing to pieces.

Note to self: Do not place your phone on the lid of a hot tub, on a magazine, and then accidentally push the lid a bit causing it to drop to a weird angle. This will cause your new shiny phone to toboggan launch off the side of said lid down a concrete flight of stairs, to it's demise.

Don't do that.
Because the result isn't pretty.
And now I have a busted phone whose alarm won't shut off and I can't do anything about it because the screen is completely black and broken.
Cool.

Anyways, back to the current state of affairs.
Spending.
We finally (FINALLY!) paid off our credit card at the stroke of Halloween. And now I can work on repaying some other debts.

November is an expensive month, but not necessarily for fun things.
We needed boat insurance, so we bought that.
I needed to enroll us in new health insurance for 2016, so we pre-paid for the first month.
The dogs need shots and pills, so we gotta pay for that junk.
We have Thanksgiving travel and an annual SHRIMP BOIL party this month.
And I had to fucking pay for my damn phone IN FULL before I can even contemplate getting a new one.

Needless to say, even though the credit card is paid off for trivial things, the big things just hit so we're kind of back at square one.

Therefore, I decided to declare this month No-Buy November.
Where we don't buy stupid shit just because we can.
That means no clothes, no shoes, no trinkets for the house.
Only important things and only if they are absolutely necessary.

Because Christmas is right around the corner, dudes.
And I am NOT heading into that month with debt stress. I can't and I won't.

As much as I would love to just buy the ever loving shit out of Homegoods right now...and I may or may not be drooling thinking about it, I will not step foot into that place until December.

So tell me, how do you keep your spending in check? Will I be able to last the whole month?
Keep it real. Thanks for reading!