Budgeting Bloggers Q2 2016

With June being over, we are officially over half way through the year. It’s a great time to reassess plans and budgets that were made (or make new ones!), since things change over the course of a year. I’ll be honest, I didn’t really set myself a strict budget for anything this year. We’ve been pretty lax to being particular about our spending, especially with a big move and so many changes taking place. But now that we are pretty settled into our routine, we’ve reassessed our finances, and are re-establishing a budget. Moving forward I’ll have $100 to spend each month on clothing, shoes, and accessories. It’ll be a little tighter than the free-spending I’ve been doing so far this year, but as you’ll see below, I have a healthy start into the second half of the year.

Now, I had said in my post last month that my goal was not to go over $250 for the entire quarter. I definitely went well over that, as you can see below. I got a little caught up in the sales happening around Memorial Day, and ended up placing two rather large orders, one from Ann Taylor and the other from Loft. I love those stores, as is evidenced if you take a look in my closet, but I’ve been frustrated with the selection of petite sizes available in the actual stores. When the opportunity came up to try all the sizes and styles I wanted at 50% off I jumped on it. A great selection of new things came from that online shopping spree! (A few things didn’t make it into the pictures, though, like the sweater I’m wearing here.)

Here is the breakdown of my spending this past quarter:

I didn’t plan to bring home as many things as I did. I have been toeing the line of not wanting to buy clothes because I’m trying to lose some weight, and why buy clothes if I’ll just need new clothes in the end? But that is the wrong type of thinking. Before our move to Portland I did a pretty substantive clean-out of my closet. I didn’t have that many things to move in the end, and I probably need to do another sweep to clean out all the things that really shouldn’t have survived the cut. Many of the things that stayed, did so because they fit comfortably, but didn’t necessarily reflect my personal style as much as I’d like.

Even though I’m interested in getting healthier and losing some weight, I don’t need to put the rest of my life on hold. I’m not going to help my self-esteem by forcing myself to wear the same limited supply of clothes that I only sort-of like but I keep around because they happen to fit me. It isn’t healthy to live in an idea of what the future might be like. You have to embrace who you are at this moment, and make that the best for you.

With this in mind, I decided to keep a lot more than I was originally planning on. My closet now feels like it has a fresh spring in it’s step, and getting dressed is exciting again! If my body does change in the future, I’ll make sure to dress it accordingly when the time comes. In the mean time, I’m going to love my new clothes that fit the body I have now, and feel free to be myself no matter what size I am at the moment.

Have you ever put a hold on your purchases because you were trying to wait for change to happen?

Linking up with Franish for Budgeting Bloggers