Guilt-laden Spending

I opted to skip posting on Sunday, plus we stayed pretty busy all day. I think I will just keep it a regular thing to NOT post on Sundays, saving the day for myself, my girls, and church. In the meantime, I've spent lots of money on mostly good things. Saturday turned out to be a non-spending day. I'd been thinking about that for Friday, but it just didn't work out, so I did finally get one in. Well, sort of. I wrote checks and paid some bills:

• $36.04 cell phone bill
• $50.00 church donation
• $63.00 May lunch allowance
• $188.46 transfer to savings
• $140.00 CC payment

All these are normal and expected expenses. The church thing increases by $5.00 on a monthly basis because I'm trying to move it up somewhere closer to an actual "tithe". In a perfect world, I won't have a CC payment, and the savings amount will be higher. Once I've got the last CC knocked out, my goal is to keep it that way.

Sunday was a little worse. We went grocery shopping, and that actually turned out better than I had planned, but we also went to Walmart... for one thing... and ended up with several things. Of course, I justified each extra purchase, but it still could put me in the red at the end of the month. AND we went to lunch after church, but I had a gift card which I earned with my blood (very literally, I'm a platelet donor), and while the card was in my wallet, I'm not counting it as spending of any sort.

• $152.40 groceries (2 weeks)
• $62.01 random WM crap

The WM stuff bugs me, though I know each item will be useful, enjoyable, and/or make me smile.

• Picture frame for the soccer pics I ordered. It looks great makes me smile already. Think how I'll feel about it in 10 years when they're grown!
• Packing tape and dispenser. I'm moving in 5 weeks, so this is a definite necessity. We had one from our last move (14 years ago!), but the tape was ... old and gross and the dispenser rusted and cranky.
• Plastic boxes with lids. One for each of us to keep our random photos and, for the girls, school certificates. I've been looking for the appropriate size for these for a long while now. Having been a purchase I've thought about for a long time, I feel a lot less guilty about it.
• Black Sharpies. For marking moving boxes. I've been thinking about this one for a few weeks as well.
• One reusable "green" grocery sack. I've decided to hop on the bandwagon with these, but I'll do it one bag at a time. $1.00.
• 8x10 photo of BG. This is for the school play and was the reason I went to WM to begin with.
• V-neck tees and sweatpants. These were for LG, and I'll pay myself back for them from the savings I have for their clothing allowance.

As I talk about each item I feel good about them, until it comes time to look at the entire bill and put it into the checkbook register, then I feel guilty again. Ah well... it's not like I bought a pair of Jimmy Choo's or anything, I really have to give myself SOME credit.

hh.