Is it really Labor Day already? I’m not complaining … the sooner we say goodbye to summer, the sooner my electric bill goes back to normal. Unfortunately, here in North Carolina, we’ve got another six weeks of summer temperatures and humidity (at least). Ugh. Hopefully September will fly by as quickly as August did!

This weekend also marks the end of our first month of budgeting! I’ll be posting an end-of-month budget round up on Sunday, but here’s a little spoiler: I think it’s been a success! More to come on that later.

We also found out that my husband is getting a raise for his teaching assistantship. Yay! More to come on that later, too.

I participated in two blog carnivals this week. My post on saying ‘no’ to the birthday lunch was featured in the Festival of Frugality hosted by FIRE Finance, and my post on being frugal when temptation strikes was featured in the Money Hacks Carnival. I hope you’ll head over and check them out if you haven’t already.

And now here are the posts that inspired me this week! Enjoy!

• Kelly at Almost Frugal asked what frugal habit would you give up if you could? I enjoy most of our frugal habits. I am much happier and feel like I have way more control over our money and our future now that we’re frugal. The only thing I’d give up is the bare-bones grocery shopping. I would love to buy exclusively organic produce, fancy cuts of meat, and other expensive specialty items. Maybe someday we’ll be able to budget for higher grocery costs, though. Kelly also posted some frugal gift ideas that you don’t want to miss.

• Christina at Northern Cheapskate asks the question: to Wii or not to Wii? I think we can all relate to this. We scrimp and save so much, then sometimes it’s hard to decide if it’s time to reward ourselves.

• Trent at the Simple Dollar wrote about how to avoid spending money as a reward for ‘being good.’ I still struggle with this. It’s easy to tell yourself you deserve it, but will you ever really get anywhere if you celebrate saving by spending? He also wrote a great post about saving for your child’s college education. We plan to start saving before our first child is even born, so I love seeing everything broken down step by step.

• Tiffanie at We Like Money explores the seven “debtly” sins from the book “Debt-Free by 30.” It’s an interesting look at the spending and debt problems that plague a lot of college students and twentysomethings. If only I’d read it before college!

I’ve got lost of posts planned for the three-day weekend, so I hope you’ll stop by again before the holiday is over. For those of you heading out of town, have a great holiday!