I've again spent my late fall 'allotment' within the first two weeks of the cross-quarter's beginning. Well, that's not true; I've got 16 bucks left for an emergency (pedicure-related or otherwise!) or a thrifting find. One of the downsides of figuring out your style pretty clearly is that when you see stuff you like and you know you will use, you want to buy it, even if you don't have the money! Still, I think I picked up some really useful items this cross-quarter. (It pained me to spend fall money on two out of season summer items, although they were both great deals. Another downside of the seasonal budgeting?)

The counts so far are 20 items: 3 pairs of shoes, 1 belt, 1 dress, 4 pants, 2 skirts, 3 sweaters, 1 jacket, 5 tops. This is similar to late summer, in which I bought 18 items, and early fall, with 20. I am considering a goal for 2015 where I try to lower this number, and spend more per item, ala Mo's project of a year or two ago. Funny thing is that if I'd been tracking this a year or two ago my counts would have been significantly higher, what with all the thrifting and secondhand buying I was doing.

One thing I have noticed since I started tracking this seasonally, earlier this year, is that I've bought a lot more shoes than I expected. I had a lot of shoes already, but several of them were really on their last legs and I need to be better about replacing them as I go rather than waiting until they are literally falling apart. This impacts my budget because since I don't have to buy heavy coats, shoes are often my most expensive items per garment.

I've been giving the concept of 'enough' a lot of thought recently. Certain events in my family and personal life have left me feeling out of control, and one of the ways that I comfort myself in those situations is to shop. It's not buying stuff per se, although that is part of it - it's feeling free to make choices on your own without anyone else's say so, about in a way trying to define who you are and what's important to you. It's been helpful for me to remind myself that other values are also important to me: having a good relationship with my spouse, which requires me keeping my spending under control; being able to do other things with my time and save up for other priorities, etc. But when your monkey brain is screaming that's sometimes hard to remember.