I am thinking that I should really set myself one. I have spent a fortune on stash this month and there is still more I want and really struggling to hold back. It's payday next week so it shouldn't be hard but it sooo is!!!!
So for those that have one do you find it hard to stick to or are you quite good at waiting until the next month of yo have spent it?
X
____________________________________________________________________ Lisa
WIPs
A Treasured Time
A Kiss For Snowman
Ballet Shoes
WIPs
Star Wars Afghan:Chewbaca
HAEDs:
O Kitten Tree
Dancing with the Cat
Everything else "on hold"
2022 Finished: Star Wars Afghan: Princess Leia, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Finn, Rey, Poe, Han Solo,Darth Vader, BB8,Luke Skywalker
I don't budget.. but I also don't buy.
I am single- no kids, no partner, no pets.
So my money is mine to spend however I want, with no one but myself, and my bank to answer to.
I am not a stash spender.
I don't understand the inability to resist the temptation to buy.
I have never seen a stitch project that I absolutely had to have, right that second.
If its not something that I can realistically start and work on soon.. why buy it now?
Who is to say I'll still want it when I finally start it?
I'll keep on a list, or a link on my Pinterest board so I can find it when I am ready.
But until then, the money stays in my bank account.
I do not know what has happened to me this year but I have become a spender. I normally only would buy an occasional pattern because I already have so many but this year there have been several I just can not resist. I think it is because I joined the Stitch from Stash challenge. As soon as I did that I just could not stop buying. Of course everything I have bought has a person I intend to give the finished project to. So I am not just buying. I have the plans to stitch them just need to get them worked.
But no to answer your question I do not budget. If I want something I get it. The only requirement is I have to have the spare money. I will not buy anything on a credit. My version of COD, I will order online but the cash has to be available in my account.
If you are looking for some one to help change you, look in the mirror
When my wife & I got married in '91 we agreed a sum of 'Pocket Money' per month that would be no quibble money for each of us. Everything else was to be discussed together. That was £30/month. It stayed at that amount until last year when we upped it to its inflation adjusted value of £50 having realised that our kids had slightly more pocket money than we did. Out of that comes all personal spending - fountain pens, statues, stitching stuff & pictures. This is the main reason I'm holding off with my next stitching project until next month. It needs 98 colours I've not got, and fabric too. That'll work out as around £50 and I've already put this month's pocket money into a fund for the Luis Royo 'Uranos Drops' statue should it actually be made.
MaggieM1750 wrote:I don't budget.. but I also don't buy.
I am single- no kids, no partner, no pets.
So my money is mine to spend however I want, with no one but myself, and my bank to answer to.
I am not a stash spender.
I don't understand the inability to resist the temptation to buy.
I have never seen a stitch project that I absolutely had to have, right that second.
If its not something that I can realistically start and work on soon.. why buy it now?
Who is to say I'll still want it when I finally start it?
I'll keep on a list, or a link on my Pinterest board so I can find it when I am ready.
But until then, the money stays in my bank account.
I wish I had your restraint!!! Like Rose if I have the money then I'll get it, normally I'm not too bad but the last two months i am not sure what has happened. Maybe it's just a fluke but I am thinking maybe a budget in the future will guarantee that it won't happen again.
Richard, does that mean that now you have finished your latest piece you have nothing to stitch at them moment?
____________________________________________________________________ Lisa
WIPs
A Treasured Time
A Kiss For Snowman
Ballet Shoes
Budget goes out the window every time Nora Corbett releases a new pattern that I like
But I am saving up to go traveling (possibly moving) so I try and reason with myself that it would be better to save then have to move a bunch of stash to another country on the other side of the globe hehe...
Also now some of my money is used to invest in my business, I need pretty fabrics to model stitch on....right? And those 25% off entire purchase coupons at Micheal's are a no brainer to stock up on a bunch of DMC!!
My mom says I can talk myself into anything, and she is an enabler so she isn't much help also my dad has recently got into cross stitching so he is starting to dip into my stash!! have to teach him to go through mom's first like I do lol...
LastingAllure wrote:
Also now some of my money is used to invest in my business, I need pretty fabrics to model stitch on....right? And those 25% off entire purchase coupons at Micheal's are a no brainer to stock up on a bunch of DMC!! ..
Goes without saying
I think I may be kidding myself trying to set a budget
____________________________________________________________________ Lisa
WIPs
A Treasured Time
A Kiss For Snowman
Ballet Shoes
I don't have a budget, but like Maggie, I don't buy. A couple of decades ago (okay, maybe three) I had a lot of disposable income and no commitments or obligations outside my own wants and needs. I spent a LOT of money on stash I just HAD to have. This was back when charts eventually went out of print and really were out of print -- no digital charts and certainly no downloadable charts (heck it was before Windows 1.0) -- so if you saw something you wanted, you'd better grab it before it went OOP. I spent money hand over fist on stash and accumulated quite a collection. Over the years, my tastes changed and my interests changed. That accumulation of stash I just HAD to have became dead weight that I had to move out of the way every time I wanted to get into the closet. I ended up giving a lot of it away just to get out from under it.
So no, I no longer have that frenzied desire to buybuybuy-gottahaveitgottahaveit. I put stuff on wishlists and mull them over and revisit them. Most of the time, it all gets removed from the wishlist because I've lost interest in them. If I do buy a chart nowadays, it's been on my wishlist for at least six months -- usually more -- and it's in an electronic format. I won't buy a hard-copy chart anymore because I don't have to.
When I went to work, 1989, I put back $10.00 a week out of my check. When I got laid off in 2008, B/H took it out of his check. I would put it back as my "hobby money," and spend it on Black Friday to get my "finishing" supplies for the year's projects.
As we are "empty nesters", I will be taking it out of my Social Security check each month.
Also we have a Christmas Club account, $250.00 each person. When I started it in 1990, there were 5 of us, as the kids left, it's now down to 2. We take out $50.00 for the name of the person that we drew name for Christmas, then the rest is ours. I add mine to my already "hobby money". I bring back "what's left" after Black Fri. and add it to the next yrs. "hobby money."
I have a budget thanks to the stitching from stash challenge. Ive been pretty good at staying under $25/month. last year I spent about $3000 on stitching stuff, so a budget is good for me..
Mables 2016 SAL
Holland Springtime Mandalla (chatelaine)
Once I became an empty nester I decided that for once I would spend on any chart, fabric, accessories that I thought I needed. Now I'm about to move into an aged care home and can't take my extremely large stash with me. I have advertised it several times at extremely low prices and not been able to sell one item so I am going to have to give away thousands of dollars worth of kits, charts, fabrics, etc. I've learned my lesson, if I had my time over again I'd only buy what was necessary. I could sell it outside Australia but the postage doesn't make that worthwhile.
I save all our change for various things but the 20p coin tin is mine for my sewing stuff it seems to average about 10 to 15 pounds a month but it is enough for most of my sewing needs, it does not cover framing but as most of the things i do are gifts the framing cost comes from the gift budget and it seems to work for me
I went cash free years ago, so that wouldn't work for me. My wife, OTH, puts all the coins she finds in the street in the cat's 'Fighting Fund'. The fund that pays the vets bills when the cats have been fighting... Since old Albert (the cat in my avatar) died in 2004 there hasn't been much call on the fighting fund, so it's been raided a few times for other things.
I don't have a set budget per se.. my budget is 'as little as humanly possible' .. for me this has meant that I keep a full set of DMC because it is cheaper to do that when floss is on sale than it is to order single skeins I need online. So every few months when I go to visit my friends who have a Joanns in their town, if there's a sale I stock up on everything I need and am running low on, if there's no sale, I only buy what I am completely out of. While I'm there, I check other items I use and see if anything's on sale - last time I went to Joanns I found of 28 and 22 count fabric for under $2 each so I bought a couple of each. Larger items like my millenium frame I put on my christmas or birthday list though I think asking for a Needle Needs stand might be pushing it a bit.
I really spend very little on cross stitch supplies. My scissors are old cuticle scissors, my magnetic needleminder is made of two magnets that fell out of something else and an altoids tin holds my needles. I decided to be very strict with myself about not overdoing the stash after acquiring a lifetime and then some worth of knitting yarn, most of which I haven't touched in a few years now. I had way more money to blow on impulse purchases then compared to now. And yet so much of it is 'special' stuff.. gifts, bought on trips with friends, dyed by fellow yarn dyers, etc that I can't bear to get rid of it either. I suppose eventually some of it will get knit up but it'll take forever and a day!
also my dad has recently got into cross stitching so he is starting to dip into my stash!! 
have to teach him to go through mom's first like I do lol...
