So it is that time again—for a check-in on my yearlong limited spending challenge.

We’re now three-fourths of the way through 2021, and I’ve realized that while I haven’t quite hit the stride I did when I started the challenge (January was the best month to date for this challenge), September wasn’t that bad of a month in terms of managing my splurges.

My limited spending challenge is just that—I’m trying to limit my spending by dividing things into two groups (or categories): needed items and splurges.

So I did really well that first month, and then started slipping each month a little more. I planned to ‘rebound’ and start honoring the challenge again in June, did fairly well for the month, did okay during July (though there will always be some type of splurge), and did okay during August (if we ignore the book splurges), and did fairly well during September.

So how did September go in terms of the purchases/splurges?

In terms of physical items bought:

There was one ‘essential’ order from Amazon that included: dog treats, some hard candy (butterscotch), a couple of notebooks, some beads and more cloth for doing cross-stitching.

In terms of books, there were mainly a small handful of e-books bought (along with one physical book at the beginning of the month):

E-books:

  1. Don’t Look Now by Mary Burton
  2. The Tiger King: Master of the Cats, Part One by Trinity Blacio
  3. Defender (Doms of Mountain Bend #3) by BJ Wane
  4. The Nine Waves of Creation: Quantum Physics, Holographic Evolution and the Destiny of Humanity by Carl Johan Calleman
  5. The Morgan Brother series (five books) by Avery Gale

The one ‘physical’ book was Doing Cultural Geography edited by Pamela Shurmer-Smith

I also bought a course bundle (multi-passionate must haves bundle of 2021), which included a handful of courses related to multi-projects.

So when I compare September to the last few months (or actually any month other than January)—I’ve done really well in limiting the spending. The goal for the last few months is only to have maybe one or two ‘essential’ orders from Amazon (possibly up to three come November and December) for these last three months.

I will probably continue this challenge well into 2022 as a means of trying to get the credit card debt down (there are only two credit card bills that are ‘high’), but also as a means of not getting ahead of myself or distracting myself from my goals.