Lately, I’ve felt like I’ve fallen off the frugal wagon somewhat. Since the beginning of the month, I’ve felt a little off my game when it comes to frugality, money saving and money making so I thought I would share with you the reasons why and what I intend to do about it.

I think the word ‘frugal’ means different things to different people, for my family it means saving money on the everyday necessities so we can afford for me to stay at home with the children and still have money to spend on the things that are important to us like days out, special occasions and home improvement.

For our family to survive and thrive on just one income means that being frugal is necessary, it’s a lifelong learning process and sometimes I can be a little hard on myself and feel like a total failure if we wander slightly off the frugal path and I think that’s what’s happened lately.

Here are a few things that have happened this month that I feel have caused my tumble off the frugal wagon.

• We have overspent every week on the grocery budget
• I’ve let coupons and vouchers expire instead of using them
• We’ve used the credit card to buy a new tumble dryer (ouch)
• We’ve spent way too much money on junk food
• We failed to cancel some free trial offers leading to unexpected expenses
• We haven’t paid much extra money off our credit card debt
• We’ve passed up opportunities to earn a little extra cash (so unmotivated)
• I’ve let food go to waste

You might look at the list above and think it’s insignificant or you may even think it’s terrible for someone who writes a blog about living frugally. I think it’s important, to be honest, and show you that I’m human and that we make mistakes and become unmotivated sometimes.

Writing it all down here helps to hold us accountable, to write our mistakes down in black and white and to make a plan for moving forward.

I’ve made a list of all the areas I feel that we are failing in and one by one I’m going to address them this week, I’m going back to frugal basics and I’m going to put everything I’ve learned back into action.

I’m going to remind myself that like with all things in life, it’s the journey that’s most important and not the destination. We won’t ever give up on our dreams of financial freedom no matter how long that might take.