This has been an exhausting, expensive week. This work situation (of basically doing my job and my former boss's for no extra money) is really getting to me. Everyone in the house has had some form of cold (the first of many presents from daycare, I assume) and NT, who's typically superhumanly healthy, got hit especially hard.

So after unsuccessfully trying to talk him into ordering food instead of cooking Monday, I took the bull by the horns and stopped off at one of our favorite Indian restaurants on Tuesday after work. Indian food? My treat? NT couldn't say no. He was in heaven.

That wiped out most of my spending money. Then I didn't feel like any of the leftovers in the fridge for a couple days (there were these two options I was never in the mood for--don't know why I was being stubborn!), so I bought lunch two days in a row. Then on Thursday, I bought a six-pack of beer for me and AS, knowing we had lots of crappy work staring us in the face.

So Thursday night, I was all out of personal spending money. AS had freelance work, NT had schoolwork, and I'd had to bring some editing home from my regular job. I proposed something I never do: We ordered delivery and I just "worked it into the budget." (For the time being I took it out of future grocery money, but we're so far into future grocery money that I may have to do something else.)

It felt so weird, but we were all run down with colds and work, and you can never quite take a full-on lazy night with a baby to feed, change and entertain, so we just did it. I have a large money surplus every month, so it's not like we can't afford it, but I just usually put that money either toward debt, savings or some PLANNED fun purchase, such as travel or gifts. Our spending money is the only money we use for piddling away on takeout food, and it's pretty much been that way for more than three years now.

We got more spending money on Friday, and we pitched in to get some wine and beer (and some fancy nonalcoholic beverages for our nondrinker friend) for dinner at our friends' place.

This freelance project AS just finished up will pay $700, and I've already decided half will go to debt and half we can use for clothes. So I "advanced" us the $350 to go clothes shopping. Saturday we went to the mall and hit up our usual places, Old Navy and H&M. H&M is on a really annoying all-skinny-pants, super-duper-eighties thing right now, so I found nothing, but Old Navy had some cheap, nice tops. We hit DSW and Payless for some new work shoes. NT got a gorgeous gray hoodie at Puma.

And finally we went to Sears out of desperation, because I couldn't find non-tapered pants anywhere (and with my proportions, believe me, they're not a good idea). Turns out Sears has a fairly nice, fairly cheap selection of clothes. Who knew? I think of them as the place to get appliances. So I finally found some trousers that aren't skin-tight all the way down, and AS found a nice embellished tank top. We resolved to go straight to Sears first the next time we have clothes money, because at that point we were too tired and nearly out of money so we didn't really look around much.

I did pretty well--I actually didn't try that hard to find on-sale stuff, but some of it found me. At Old Navy I got a long belted cardigan for $20 and two long-sleeve tees for $6.50 each. My Payless shoes I thought were going to be $30 a pair, but when they rang me up, one was $30 and one was $25. And my two pairs of trousers I thought would be $30 each, but one was only $10! I meant to spend $105 and spent $128 instead, but I've got some spending cash that I'll pay in on Monday, so it's all good.

Not sure how the other two fared, but I think they both stayed under their spending limits (they know they have to pay in some of their spending cash if they didn't). I know NT got a pair of Old Navy trousers for less than $5.

We also got a snack at the food court after all that shopping.

So, phew. Not frugal by many people's calculations. The reason I say it's way better than in the old days, though, is that it's all paid for. Even the unplanned food delivery on Thursday, though it was not budgeted for, I have money in the bank to pay for. And that is my main goal in life. Only buy stuff if I can afford it. This definitely felt like all stuff we could afford. If we couldn't, we'd have found cheaper solutions for all of the above. I have faith in our fiscal discipline and really believe that.