It’s good to see you, michieda!
Surprise first day of budgetober stream! In 5 minutes
One of my kids has a sticker aversion. The rewards for good behavior in school were all stickers, so lucky for them she was a born rule follower! I still take all the stickers off the fruit as a result….
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Oh. My real goal for this month, which I am writing down for accountability, is to deal with the giant lump of money that is just sitting in my credit union accounts.
To buy this condo, I had to liquidize a bunch of accounts and fork over the cash (in the form of electrons.) when dd bought out our investment in the old house, all that money went into the credit union where it sits because I don’t want to think about it.
But it’s time to shift that around into a better long term place. This month. Really.
Also I will call someone for an estimate on replacing the a/c. Really.
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Starting the month out with buying infant Tylenol and GM having a business lunch out.
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Target spend is under $800 for groceries and $400 for restaurant/takeout. Yes we are spendy-pants and somehow went over that grocery budget last month. Groceries includes paper goods and pharmacy items as well so it’s not quite as bad as it sounds, but still high! This is a 5-grocery-trip month for us since we usually go on weekends, so I think aiming any lower is unrealistic. For restaurants, I may need to adjust up because we will be traveling for a long weekend with lots of meals out. I’ll adjust that with my magic wand if needed. Ready to do this!
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Paper products are sooo pricey.
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Okay…here goes…in Canadian dollars…
Discretionary Expenses
$400 left for groceries and dining out. We just did a big shop Thursday. There’s only 2 of us.
$1000 for vacation. No way are we going to spend that much! We’re going to relatives for Thanksgiving.
$1645 household (computers, furnishings, miscellaneous). What’s left in this category until the end of 2024.
$900 recreation. I’m not sure why we have this category. We never spend from it! This has been accumulating all year.
$2945 joint budget
Personal Allowance budget
$120 clothing. Need a nice top for a lecture, banquet & silent auction.
$55 haircut
$240 footwear. Need new walking shoes, but will probably put this off until my hip is better.
$30 new 2024 planner. Won’t purchase until they go on sale.
$85 education. Saving up to pay for a workshop series in February. Must pay before Christmas. 
$30 charity. Might go over in this category. A new homeless camp has opened up in our community. Mostly people with jobs who can’t afford skyrocketing rents.
$125 business expenses (subscriptions, website, membership site, etc.)
$105 gifts. This is being saved for Christmas.
$20 miscellaneous personal. Being saved to pay for coffee out with people on vacation. Maybe my niece.
$810 total personal budget
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I’m in for the stickers.
My money budget ticks along pretty well so I’d like to focus on better budgeting and spending my time.
Goals:
- Block out some time for some priorities that consistently get pushed to the side, and honor that.
- To make things get less likely to be thrown off track, set and stick to a consistent bedtime (in bed by 10 pm at the latest) and get out of bed by 7 am at the latest.
- Plan out each day the day before with a reasonable schedule & to do list, with some downtime set aside in each day.
It’s baby steps for me. I’ll be happy if I can do 2 & 3 at least 2/3 of the time, or 20 days in October, because I am so resistant to this for some reason. I’d like to get at least 2 blocks of time per week for the priorities mentioned in 1.
I was not out of bed by 7 am this morning.
I have not yet written down my plan for tomorrow, although a loose one has already formed in my mind.
I might get to bed by 10 pm tonight. I’ve got 1 hour and 17 minutes.
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I’m in. DH and I just came off 9 months of very high spending and have recommitted to a more frugal lifestyle. I’ll post our budget soon.
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I’ve taken a look at what I spent on food last month and drafted a budget for October based on that.
$550 CAD will be my budget cap for all food for October, with no more than $240 CAD of that coming from eating out and no more than $162 CAD coming from the meal prep service I subscribe to. That leaves about $148 CAD for groceries.
I’ll also be tracking the average cost of my meals depending on whether I ate at a restaurant/takeout vs. made the meal from the meal prep kits vs. groceries.
Happy October to everyone, and good luck on your budgeting!
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For this month:
$250 groceries
$150 restaurants
$150 personal spending
$150 clothes
Throwing in Clothes because I always think I spend $0 but on average it is $40. And, I need to get some expensive basics (shoes, bras). Don’t yet know how much the shoes will cost.
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I’m in!
Had a big jolt to my finances last month and I need to reconsider everything to drastically lower my expenditures. I’m going to stop avoiding various debt and try to become an expert in getting out from under them.
It’s all a bit much, but strangely I also feel a bit of hope that a month from now I’ll be feeling much better about it.
I love how relaxed October is compared to Nov/Dec and the weather is crisp but not freezing. Lots of nice moments curling up on the couch with a cup of tea.
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My budget is almost exactly the same. We’re aiming for:
$800 for groceries - I include everything under the groceries category, like household products (cleaning supplies, paper products, etc)
$600 for restaurant/takeout - we have a couple birthdays and our anniversary this month, so I went on the higher side to accommodate.
–
October 1
Groceries: $800 / $800 remaining
Restaurant: $600 / $564.73 remaining
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I drove home to AZ from southern UT yesterday so my gas line item was very high for me, just shy of $60. Then another $35 for emergency pet food as the neighbor feeding my cat and dog said they ran out of food. I think he is feeding them VERY generously. Which is ok.
In 5 days I drive back up to UT for the MMM meetup. I am going to try to keep the restaurant budget in some kind of limit.
I am tracking all outgo. I ‘practiced’ for the last half of September and fell apart in the last 3 days. I am more set up for it now. The trip to Moab will mess with my routines so once I’m back from that hopefully I’ll be logging things real time. At this point I’m just tracking to see where I really am.
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Here’s my monthly budget as well as the line items that are annual spending categories. We’ve way overspent in some categories but hoping to tone it down until we can get a fresh start in 2024. Will update as we work our way through the month.
| Monthly Budget Items | Monthly Spend | Monthly Budget | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Required expenses | ||||
| Nanny | 2000 | |||
| Preschool | 260 | |||
| Mortgage | 1233 | |||
| Electricity | 135 | |||
| internet | 40 | |||
| cell phone | 30 | |||
| Groceries | 800 | |||
| Pharmacy | 20 | |||
| Household | 100 | |||
| Clothes | 100 | |||
| Gasoline | 450 | |||
| Parking/tolls | 20 | |||
| Work accounting | 100 | |||
| Medical copays | 100 | |||
| tractive | 8 | |||
| Things that enrich our lives | ||||
| Gifts/charity | 100 | |||
| Toddler Outings | 80 | |||
| Shopping | 80 | |||
| Gym | 89 | |||
| kindle (bookclub) | 15 | |||
| youtube tv | 10 | |||
| Things that give us a break | ||||
| Babysitting | 150 | |||
| Housekeeper | 160 | |||
| restaurants/fast food/ice cream | 250 | |||
| Annual Budget Items | YTD Spend | Annual Budget | ||
| Required expenses | ||||
| Car Maintenance | 1538 | 2000 | ||
| Insurance (Home, car, umbrella, camper, my life insurance) | 3372 | 3400 | ||
| Nanny’s workmans comp | 1019 | 650 | ||
| Property taxes | 2700 | 5400 | ||
| Oil | 1398 | 2000 | ||
| Propane | 303 | 450 | ||
| Home Improvement | 12617 | 1200 | ||
| Malpractice Insurance | 1109 | 1109 | ||
| The dog | 686 | 1000 | ||
| Hair cuts hubs | 100 | 175 | ||
| Me hair cuts | 165 | 220 | ||
| Me state licensing | 208 | 208 | ||
| Things that enrich our lives | ||||
| Conferences/CEUs | 0 | 500 | ||
| Work supplies | 366 | 200 | ||
| Concert tickets | 150 | 200 | ||
| Swim/ski lessons | 510 | 700 | ||
| Summer camp | 274 | 275 | ||
| Hotels/air bnbs | 1473 | 1300 | ||
| Camping fees | 1982 | 2000 | ||
| Sports spending | 7000 | 1000 | ||
| Totals | 6330 | 36970 | 23987 |
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Well, I wanted to pay attention to which categories we overspent in, and it’s not good. 
Basically the 5 most basic categories, other than housing, were overspent: 2 food categories, Pet, Household, and Transportation. Gas is obviously more expensive than my average spent would indicate, so I’ll put more money in the Transportation category for October. Pet should be less expensive since the cat who was on antibiotics is done, but the other cat is due for vaccines… but hopefully that will be back into the usual cost. Household has been high because I’m trying to get to the bottom of a skin issue but I think I’m close, so that should be lower again. For the food categories, I’m just going to have to pay better attention! I haven’t been that great at checking the budget before spending money.
So for those categories:
Food $725
Local Food $100
Transportation $75
Pet $200
Household $120
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Using this to track grocery spending. Last month (September) I spent $707.00, but that included a big Costco run that should not be repeated this month. I am shooting for $450 for the month.
October 1 shopping trip: spent $107.69. Remaining is $342.31.
How I am sticking to it: meal planning on weekends, planning meals that use what we already have, and maybe I will get around to doing a fridge/pantry inventory to help me remember what we already have.
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Possum is IN. I’ve actually been in for a few days, just haven’t had a chance to come here and post! I’m using this month as a reset and getting back to basics by writing down all my purchases. I know it works for me, it’s just a atter of doing it. I want to test out using the hobonichi weeks for budgeting so I’ll be giving that a go this month too.
I also want to curb my stationery spending. Cold turkey doesn’t work for me, so instead I have fun no spend tracking stickers from TCMC and gave myself a budget of $50. For whatever reason that is more motivating and somehow achieves the same goal as going cold turkey. I guess it just gives me some wiggle room and keeps me from that all or nothing thinking (“I messed up my no spend, whats the point guess I’ll buy all the things now”).
Feeling good about this heading into week one.
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I’m in.
Main goal is to stay within my budget for restaurants, hopefully magically without having my grocery budget skyrocket. I never do and am always pulling money from the future, which makes me feel super guilty. So trying to figure out cheaper alternatives from the grocery store.
Side goal is to finally empty out the old photos from my Dropbox so I can drop that subscription.
I am excited for pumpkin breads (and muffins and donuts). Love the texture and taste.
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