Hmm I’m in. I know I definitely want to rely less on convenience food from the grocery store, so I might figure out a way of tracking that vs from scratch. Further goals pending!
I’m in. I think I will focus mostly on tracking. I do however, want to keep my out-to-eat spending under control and maybe start budgeting for Christmas.
I’m in! Goals tbd shortly…
Editing to add:
- Financial goal - get $$ in the quest trade account. I did the initial set up a log in but haven’t proceeded past that. I also need to figure out stuff with it and do more research
- Physical goal - i. weighted work out 3x a week, and ii. fit bit step tracker to be raised from 10,000 to 12,000 for a target.
November is going to be a busy month with work, business travel and family visits so this all I feel comfortable with committing to right now.
I’m in! I’ll be doing what I’m doing now, so tracking all the expenses that I have some control over (i.e. not rent or medical) and posting those numbers.
My goal is to really blow out my net worth/efund over the next two months, I’m at $151k net worth now and my goal for 2019 was initially to hit $150k, but I’d love to end a little higher if I can, because my longer term goal is $300k by 2022. The main way for me to up my efund/networth is to increase my savings by decreasing spending (for efund) and also to increase my work hours (for net worth, because 80% of my pay goes into my 401(k)).
I’m not sure if I want to actually track my work hours here because it’s kind of embarrassing. Haha, like it’s hard because I’ve read lots of people’s journals and I feel like…my activity level is very different from the norm and if “they” think they do nothing and are lazy when they do like, more than I could ever do in my wildest dreams in a day…then IDK, you see where I’m going. It’s tough. So anyway, I think I’ll set a private goal in my head of work hours I’d like to hit and just report whether or not I did my best to achieve it. A big chunk of it is sort of out of my control but some of it isn’t so I’ll focus on that part!
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HAHAHAHAHA it me. This. Any goal feels like a limit to me, since the 2-year-old in my brain is constantly screaming BUY BUY BUY (when she is not screaming DONUT DONUT DONUT or WINE WINE WINE, that is, haha.)
Yeah, I’ll do this again. I’ll have to think on my goals. Probably more or less the same as October, with the added twist that I’m actually putting some spending money aside rather than my usual plan of trying not to spend ANYTHING and then OH SHIT I spend money and it is now on the credit card that I now have to pay off…
I may add cat expenses - because HOLY SHIT our adorable little furchildren are expensive little fuckers. I likely will just be tracking, and not setting a spending goal, for now. We rarely buy them toys or non-needs but, like, just their monthly flea meds are stupid expensive (thanks Chewy.com for just upping the price by $20! 
) , and Feliway is stupid expensive, and we feed them high quality food and don’t really want to downgrade that because they’re doing really well on it and (usually) don’t have horrifyingly stinky gooshy poops any more. (sorry for that visual.)
I coupon their food where I can, and I shop stores that have cash back or reward points, which helps a little here and there but, I feel like, not much? And any time I think I scored a major coup re saving money on them, it backfires. Example: I cashed in a jar of change for an Amazon gift card which was enough to cover a case of their very favorite food. It didn’t arrive. I contacted Amazon, they shipped another, which did arrive. The first shipment arrived days later. Score! Two essentially “free” (yes, I know only one was free because the other was paid for with spare change but that’s found money!) cases of their very favorite food!
Yeah… guess what they will no longer eat. 
Anyway, I’ll put down some specific numbers soon.
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I’m thinking about no stress money goals being related to figuring out my work rrsp before matching kicks in, how to use my benefits program, and thoughtfully doing holiday shopping before Dec hits.
I could also look at the potential less stress from getting to work under my own steam vs transit, but so much of that is dependent on weather, I’m not sure what to set as the success level.
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I think I’ve decided on my November goal: to track just food, grocery and gas spending. No limit, just a good faith effort to continue tracking those areas I was off on so I can get better estimates for the future and establish the mindfulness to improve my habits.
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I’m in…my goals are:
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Pack lunch most days. Eating out for lunch since starting my new position has been a major money drain
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Track all expenses honestly.
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Hello
I’m in. My main goal is to be mindful about spending and see where our money is going while eating healthy and not getting deprived. Specific goals are:
- Establishing the habit of packing lunch. I am not going to fix a number of lunches. I’ll just be mindful and see what can help me get better at it. One thing I need to do is to buy a box lunch. I currently use sad plastic containers that I am ashamed to show with at work.
- Getting the habit of meal planning and batch cooking. This includes better planning the groceries to match what I want to cook and having enough different meals to not feel deprived. This will help reduce restaurants spending and promote healthy eating.
- Tracking my personal spending. This includes everything. I will do the categories later.
- Tracking our family spending. All of it. I want to review our budget for 2020 and be realistic. I will list the categories later.
- Having a budget for the French black Friday. We need many essentials and it’ll be smart to shop then. This includes lunch boxes, some glass containers and winter gear for me and the kids. I hate shopping so I’m already dreading it. How can I make myself do it?
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Cultivating a feeling of no-stress in November, for me means making a list/spreadsheet of our household and personal maintenance and starting to work through the list. We began in October by getting me to a dentist, and I have a series of fillings starting this week. Ponder and Duckling need a dentist visit, and then we’ll book in the next one for 6 months time instead of letting it hang for several years again. We’re new-ish to home ownership still, so we need to work out what needs maintenance and at what frequency.
We also feel less stressed when we have meals and snacks planned in advance, so managing that a little better and making sure we have quick breakfasts available for Ponder would also be excellent.
This will be a tracking month for us, so that next month the budget can be more accurate.
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For everyone trying to bring their lunch to work more, there’s a place for that now:
Whatever’s giving you trouble with bringing your lunch, come get some help and encouragement! And if you’re a champion lunch-bringer, share your recipes, lunch box set-up, and fun bento boxes or whatever you use.
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I’m in!
Goals:
Keep withdrawing and using weekly cash budget for personal kinds of things
Buy and eat more pizza.
Do most of my Christmas shopping. Mail Christmas cards and still be able to pay December rent as scheduled.
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I definitely need to plan for how to handle November, which is going to be a really high stress month for me if I just let it happen.
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I’m traveling a TON, which means having to make lots of decisions about what to and what not to pay for for convenience.
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I’m expecting my boss to be pushy about me getting things done even when I’m explicitly busy, which would cause me much rage.
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I’ve got multiple things booked every weekend, which means I will have very little time to do household chores and even less to relax.
For me it might be how to spend money smartly or even think about money to ease some of these stressors. I’m anticipating a lot of mantras about FU money when work gets stressful, and an intensely packed cooler of food for one of our 4-day driving trips to avoid overpriced and under nutritious convenience foods.
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Curious whether there’s anyone else living car-free in a cold climate here, and how you budget for transportation?
My CTA unlimited pass comes out of my paycheck pretax so every ride is prepaid-for, I could ride the system 24-7 and not pay anything additional. This is, obviously, a strong incentive to avoid cabs and Lyfts. But the weather’s getting shitty. It is snowing hard right now. Realistically, there are going to be days and nights where I just do not have the mental wherewithal to stand outside in the freezing cold/snow/sleet/wind/I dunno, locusts?, with no shelters to even block the wind a little bit (many bus stops do not have them), when it’s already late and I’m probably already tired.
How do you all decide when it’s OK to say fuck it to public transport and pay for a cab/Lyft/Uber? I usually have a LOT of guilt about my spending on this. But I am not certain what’s a realistic limit.
Lyft rides are typically between $10 and $20 per ride for me - depending on where I’m going, obviously. Occasionally it creeps up to $25 or so. On one memorable occasion I got fucked by surge pricing and didn’t realize it and was charged $75, GAG. (It was a heavy snowstorm on the last day in April, though, it was a half hour until the next bus, and I just Could Not.)
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For me it got to be too stressful trying to decide whether or not to spend the money on a car trip versus saving the money and using my free transit pass or biking in misery, so I decided this year just to budget the money for car trips.
I don’t know if it helps to look at frequency instead of the dollar rate per trip, but that’s what I did to figure out how much to budget. I figure once a month was about average for me to really want a car ride, October through May.
Or you could look at how much you spent on rides last year, and compare that to how often you wished you had if money was not a factor, and go somewhere in between. I’d probably at least double what you actually spent last year because I know there were some pretty awful weather days you stuck to your guns.
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That’s a good idea. Work rage tends to lead to a strong urge to comfort-spend, for me. The other day I literally sat on my hands and chugged cup after cup of herbal tea (the only thing I had in the house that felt remotely comforting, as I’m trying to clean up my eating as well) to try and quell the urge to get online and drop a shitton of money on stuff I do not need.
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-15 before windchill is an automatic Uber home from work. I’m soft.
I like snow. Even on ridiculous slow blizzard nights I bus. Today is pouring rain. It is a dilemma. And I haven’t even gone to work yet
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I’m in!
I’ve been tracking all my spending for the last two months, so I’m planning to stick to that.
My goals:
- Reduce grocery spending (will work out a specific $$ goal).
- Reduce spending on takeaway and eating out (will work out a specific $$ goal).
- Put reminders about expiry dates of all gift cards into my phone calendar.
- No clothes shopping for me. I don’t regret buying new clothes in October because it was all necessary and thoughtful, but I don’t want it to become a habit.
No overall limit on my spending - I would LOVE for it to be a super expensive month, because I would LOVE IT if we got far enough along with garden plans to necessitate spending lots on that.
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I’m in for this month! I played along silently in October and for the first time in many months, we stuck to our food budget. (…and by that I mean the 2 meals out that were over budget were discussed and allocated to our fun money rather than moving money from the savings category to the restaurant category)
We’re moving in November! Movers are already booked and paid for but we’re relocating a couple miles down the road to save a bunch of money on rent (which will mean less stress in the long run) and I really want this to be a cheap move. We’ve already paid for movers through Uhaul’s website so my additional moving related goals are:
- Find free boxes
- No new furniture/rugs/etc. for the new place in November (aka no mindless spending until we figure out how we actually want to use the space)
- Transfer renters/car insurance addresses and use this as a time to shop around for cheaper rates
- Have snacks and food plans ready for moving day so we don’t spend money on convenience when tired
- Cancel internet/power/etc. for last day of the lease so we don’t overpay
Other money goals for November:
- Rollover 2 old 401ks into current employers 401k. I have 3 and want to consolidate down to one before possibly getting new job in 2020
- Work from home a few extra days this month (save $$ on gas! be happier! stop stressing about loosing good work reputation!)
- Update resume and apply for any job that looks exciting, even if it’s a pay cut or not ‘prestigious’ enough
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OK my more finalized goals:
- Continue using YNAB and Toodledo
- Mindful meal planning. Eat down some stuff in the freezer.
- Stabilize my diet. Track what I’m eating and how I’m feeling. I’d like to reduce the number of days I don’t feel well by figuring out what is giving me problems. Hopefully this also reduces the days I eat everything in sight. Stability would help with meal planning. I sometimes buy extra because on those days when I eat all the things, I don’t want to find myself with nothing to eat.
- Estimate what my grocery list is going to cost before I go shopping
- Get 401k rolled over to Vanguard OR, if there’s some reason it would be better not to move it now, understand why and if it’d be better to move it later, establish a plan.
I may think of more but I’ll update if I do.
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