You made it! You stuck with me for the whole month for the Frugal Fresh Start Challenge! Pat yourself on the back! I hope you feel energized with ideas and motivation to pull you through reaching the goal you set in the beginning of the Challenge. You can do this!!
Now What?
If you haven’t taken the time to implement all of the money-saving strategies we’ve talked about, take some time and go back through the posts and complete the challenges you missed. For example, lowering your bills might take more than a night to thoroughly complete if you give each one an honest-to-goodness try.
Though I won’t be giving specific challenges in the weeks to come, I will still be posting regularly about more ways to save money, earn money, budget, and pay off debt. Stick around and I’m sure you’ll learn many more tips and be motivated to continue your journey.
Create Frugal Habits
The key to continued success is creating frugal habits. Some of the challenges this month were probably new to you. Some of you had never tracked your spending or made a budget before. Between the money-saving ideas I shared and the great insights each of you shared in the comments, I’m sure we all have lots of areas where we can be more frugal and put more money toward our goals.
Don’t let that overwhelm you.
Decide on a couple of areas (or just one, if you’re feeling overwhelmed) where you can really improve. Focus daily on making this into a habit. Enlist your buddy‘s help to keep you on track. Don’t give up! You can do this!
Staying Accountable Together!
Because I wanted a place where we all can share our goals, struggles, and progress, I started a closed Facebook group called Making Frugality and Finance Fun. We’ve already had some great discussion over there! It’s inspiring to hear your successes! I love reading everyone’s great tips and suggestions for those who have questions.
Thank you to those who jumped right in and joined! For me, starting a Facebook group was like inviting a bunch of people to a party that I was really excited for, but I was nervous that no one would attend. Thanks for not leaving me hanging! 🙂
I am really excited about the goals that we all set. So many of us set goals that would really stretch us (I know we did!). Let’s all stay accountable to one another and cheer each other on! We still have five months left to work toward our six-month goal. Let’s keep in touch! We can do this!!
Challenge—Day 20
Think back through the Challenge and go back to any topics that you didn’t complete. Also, thinking about your six month goal that you set on Day 1, what habits do you need to change or keep up in order to reach your goal? Determine to form these habits!
I Love Feedback
I would love any feedback from you regarding the Frugal Fresh Start Challenge. Feel free to leave any suggestions and ideas in the comments or email me directly (the name of this blog @ gmail dot com ) or catch me on social media.
- Were there topics that you were hoping I’d cover but didn’t?
- What was missing or wasn’t thorough enough?
- What did you like or dislike?
Let's Do This Together!
We're banding together to pay off some serious debt in 2019! We want you to join in the debt-smashing fun!
When you subscribe, you'll get monthly reminders to report your progress and you'll see how we're doing as a group!
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Are you ready to smash debt with us?!
Linda P. says
January 30, 2015 at 10:24 amThanks for devoting time to this series. You made a great point in this post. Sometimes, it takes months before all efforts to economize show up in finalized form. For example, when we struck out to lower our phone bill, we first needed to research various companies and decide which fit our needs. It turned out, we had different needs and chose different prepaid carriers. Then we needed to decide whether buying a new phone for my husband’s Republic Wireless choice was going to be balanced out by the lower bills. We needed to figure out if we paid off my T-Mobile branded phone so I could leave T-Mobile, would be we able to sell that for the same or a larger amount than we might pay for me to get a comparable used Verizon-branded phone. How would I go about safely selling my phone and buying a comparable used one? I knew I’d taken care of my phone, but what if someone else had dropped theirs into the toilet before deciding to sell it? Then we had to actually do all those things. My husband was so cautious about moving from a familiar post-paid carrier to a prepaid one that he wanted a month of overlap to be certain the RW service worked as expected (it did), so we paid more that month rather than less. We couldn’t risk a break in service, so we had to time my husband’s shift to coincide with the end of a T-Mobile billing period so we wouldn’t be double billed. Then we went through the process for me and my choice, necessary because my work requires the use of data even when I’m away from wi-fi.
And so it went. It took time to make a master grocery list so we could stock up when prices dropped well below my last lowest price. Of course, that meant that we spent more to stock up as we started building up inventory. Grocery bills didn’t go down immediately although I loved seeing a fuller pantry and freezer.
The process sounds overwhelming, but we’re bright people and we knew we’d figure it all out. We’re also in our mid-60’s, so experience has taught us to take overwhelming changes one step at a time and to be patient. Back in August when we first decided to start clamping down on how much money was flowing out of our 401K’s, we decided it would probably be February before we saw a month in which all the changes–lifestyle and bills–were put into effect. That’s turned out to be about right, although we started seeing immense benefits immediately. Some changes, such as not eating out, kick in immediately, but other people just starting down this path should expect some time for the effect of all the changes to be seen. And if I sound as if I’m trying to come across as an expert, far from it! I’m just a fellow traveling going down this path . . . one with a remarkably lighter step than when she first started it!
Stephanie says
January 30, 2015 at 9:57 pmI’m happy that you are making progress and that your “step is lighter” than when you first started!! It is important not to expect changes to happen overnight. Keep up the good work and positive attitude!
[email protected] says
January 30, 2015 at 3:48 pmAwesome job with this series Stephanie!
Stephanie says
January 30, 2015 at 9:51 pmThanks Mark!
CherylJ says
January 30, 2015 at 7:05 pmI really enjoyed this series as well as the challenges. I plan to come back often.
Stephanie says
January 30, 2015 at 9:52 pmThanks CherylJ! It’s been nice to have your insights and participation!
Mr. LawSchoolDebt says
January 31, 2015 at 1:23 pmGreat series! I think you could definitely make an eBook with it.
Stephanie says
February 6, 2015 at 4:02 pmThank! 🙂
[email protected] says
January 31, 2015 at 2:53 pmI really enjoyed this series too — I’d recommend it to any beginner. And it was fun for me too. I managed to keep my entire month’s spending to not quite $1100 — about 1/3 of my income. Not terrible!
Stephanie says
February 6, 2015 at 4:03 pmGreat job!
Anne @ Money Propeller says
January 31, 2015 at 3:21 pmI just saw this challenge now, it sounds totally awesome. Sticking with something for awhile makes it a habit and that makes ALL the difference in the world. I’ve been working on creating a few new habits for myself lately and I’m happy to say that some of them are finally sticking 🙂 (mostly related to fitness and meal planning, less so finances)
Zina says
February 2, 2015 at 1:53 pmI think it was surprising to us how many areas of our lives could be reviewed to see where we were hemorrhaging money. Your blog has really challenged us to look at the bigger picture. Thank you for taking the time to help out.