No Spend September in Review

So we are in October now.  My husband made a comment that he noticed the 1st of October I jumped out of the house and ran to the nearest store...which honestly was sort of true...I'd been planning Halloween costumes all month and I wanted to get to Joann's and get started.  If I'm completely honest I did cheat twice.  At the very end of August we'd bought new phones from Wireless Republic.  They got to our house in October and it became pretty obvious to me pretty fast that while they weren't as delicate as the IPhones we'd previously owned that I should probably put a cover on them.  I got these super cheap covers off ebay.  The two covers cost me less than $12.  They have been great.  They are a lot less bulky than our previous otter boxes but seem to work about as good.  I have dropped my phone at least six times and my phone has been perfectly safe.  At the end of the month I also broke down and bought Halloween Costumes for Peach and Cheetah.  I had a 40% off cartwheel that was going to expire and I knew I would lose money by waiting.  If you ignore those two splurges though the month went great.  Overall I saved $300.  It might not sound like a ton, but that's over $3000 a year I spend on going out and impulse buys.  Would it be possible to save all that money...probably not, because occasionally our kids actually do need something new (Like the coat I had to buy Captain E this week.  I guess I can't feel too bad about it.  He's fit into the same winter coat for the last three years.  He was eventually going to have to grow out of it.)  But the thing I did like about the month was it really did make me consider my purchases, especially since being stuck at home left a lot of time on my hands to do things like clean I was a little horrified by how full our house is of stuff we never use.  I realize we live in a consumption economy, I mean literally.  The frightening thing is that if we (The population of the US) don't spend money we don't have on stuff we don't need the economy literally crashes out.  It is seriously scary, so I realize this is bad for the economy advice but for my personal economy I think being a little more thoughtful about my purchases would serve me well.  I want to point out it's not like I'm some crazy spender, spender.  Dr. J and I lived for 9 years making almost no money at all so I know how to not spend but since we started making money I buy a little here and there and I realize now that stuff really adds up.  I would totally do this again.  In fact I've been Dr. J that we should do a no spend November :)