Just when I'm going great, I have a mind-melt and go and spend a fortune on something daft. Yesterday it was $14 for a few ceramic cat buttons for my daughter. I wanted to treat her and had picked out a bag of candy-coloured buttons (I was checking out a fabric store I hadn't been to before) but they were too childish so she picked the cats instead. Meanwhile I've been complaining that she shops too much... I'm an idiot. I should have kept my money in my purse and just offered to spend some time playing a game or something, or given her five dollars for her money-box. *d'oh...*

And I bought four Anzac day badges. The money is for charity, but its a sign of my impulsive spending. Two would have been fine.

Meanwhile I'm spending -hours- researching the portable keyboard for my PDA to make sure I buy a good one... I am fed up with buying products that don't work well - but do I really need to spend a whole day googling it? 

Can you squeeze money from another area to make up for it?

Helen, your post made me laugh. I have done similar things,  then drove myself batty for hours trying to get the best deal on something. Time is money, too.

Brandy, I'm very fortunate that my budget doesn't need to be so strict, and I haven't switched to the cash-in-jars yet. - (and btw that was Australian dollars so not quite as much as it sounds) but I really want to just get out of the whole impulse-buying junk-collecting habit.  We have enough STUFF. I want to funnel as much as I can into our mortgage before the interest rates go up again. I'm changing our banking arrangements (so that a lot more is automatically going to a separate account and then to the mortgage) so there will be less 'visible' cash to mess with. Working on my pricebook/budget is certainly making me acutely aware of where the money is going!

Still, I guess all new habits take a little while to establish! 

Oh whew then.

New habits do take awhile to get into. I hope you find it goes more quickly and smoothly.

Mine is I spent $71 this week OVER groc. budget because I bought all fresh and organic. I bought whatever dressing I wanted, spinach, green leaf, and azarula (sp?), other veggies, turkey brats and sausage from the counter, amish chickens.

DH and I are trying a more biblical diet for awhile and see if we see a change in our health. No pork, shellfish, rabbit etc. His boss and his wife quit eating pork products and processed meats and they noticed a change for the better and never went back.

The healthy foods do cost more much to our dismay. Maybe you will see benefits though so you feel better about the cost.

Helen, I can relate. I do way too much impulse buying. I have started making a wish list, and when I see something I want to buy I put it on my list. I end up removing most of the stuff from the list later. When I go through a catalog I get in the mail and find something I want to buy, I write the page number on the cover. A few weeks later, I look at those pages and usually just throw the catalog away.

Taking time to think about something before buying it is a good way to save money. That is why the shopping channels and infomercials have time limits. (Price good for the next twenty minutes only....etc.) If you are walking through a mall and look at a fancy new cell phone or someone stops you to give you a sample of hand lotion, it is always "On sale just for today". Yet when is there NOT a sale on cell phones?

It is easy to spend a lot of time doing research also. I have spent so long online a couple of times looking for just the "right" recipe for something that I did not have the time to make it. I have started to allow myself a certain amount of time to do research for something, then go with the best choice I had found up to that point.

No, I don't have all the answers, and these don't always work, but they are at least a baby step.

Sharon