Is this a test?

As I've mentioned before, living on a budget is nothing new to our family.  The thing is, that budget used to be fairly loose.  Now, it's much much tighter.  So while this is not our first year on a budget, it is the first year of living frugally.  And let me tell you, it is NOT easy.

I keep finding myself in these "you have to spend money to make money" situations.  I have these grand visions of planting a garden and living off the land (at least a little), but I have all of zero gardening tools.  So yes, we could in theory save money by planting, harvesting, and canning our own vegetables.  But in the meantime we must purchase everything we need to do all that.  I have no gardening tools, no seeds, no planters (I'm toying with the idea of container gardening this year. It seems a bad idea to ruin half my yard when I don't even know if I can grow a tomato yet), and none of the tools required for canning, should we make it that far.

This is just the biggest example.  There are others, such as the fact that my water bill is atrocious.  I know we could greatly benefit from a water-saving shower head.  And I know you can get those for as little as $30.  But then I think, "is that in the budget?" And the answer is no.  The budget is a work in progress, we're still trying to figure out how to buy the things we need right now, so we're definitely not at a place where we are saving for the next home renovation (and yes, in my Budget Nazi head, a $30 shower head is a major renovation).

Today my bread machine died.  I use my bread machine at least once a week, oftentimes more.  It provides us with pizza dough, dinner rolls, and cinnamon bread, among other things.  I'm trying to figure out what my new Frugal Self should do.  On one hand, the answer to the question, "is a new one in the budget?" is not one I want to answer honestly.  On the other, it saves us so much money and provides us with such yummy goodness, how can we not replace it immediately?

So to sum it all up, being frugal is way harder than I expected.  You don't realize how spoiled you are until you really start questioning every purchase you want to make.  But I'm determined to see this through.  I know I'm not perfect.  I already know I'll be buying concert tickets sometime this week.  Is a concert a necessity?  Is it in the budget?  No.  But ya know what?  I haven't been to a concert in at least five years.  I've been waiting for this particular concert for even longer than that.  I have already made the decision to sacrifice in other areas so I can be there, because it is really important to me.  I will not go further into debt for it, I will use "real" money.  There are probably more practical places for that real money to go.  Like I said, I'm not perfect.  But I'm learning.  And I think now I am going to go Google how to knead bread dough, because I no longer have a machine to do it for me.