I have spent a total of $771 in 6 days.
Groceries $26.07
Restaurant $5
Pets - mostly food $128.92
Rent/elect - billed together $369.22
Storage Unit $155.70
Gas $69.25
Internet - 1 of 2 services due $25
I’m headed to Moab tomorrow for 6 days. Gas and restaurants will be higher next week. Camping is already paid for.
I think for Budgettober I’m going to focus on our fun food category. This is restaurants, alcohol, fast food.
Goal is $800/mo for our household of 3 adults.
So far we have spent $116 which is definitely on track! I expect we’ll have another 2-3 restaurant meals next week.
Checking in.
Spending outside food & utilities so far was a trip to the movies with the kids; $65. Next week i hope to go over our subscriptions and make a list. Will probably start a list of “wants” too so we can assess timing and prioritise purchases that have the biggest benefit, like repairing our irrigation.
Checkin
$10.66 on baby incidentals.
$176.65 on takeout. It was fixing to be less until we had a hospital stay 
fortunately friends and family gifted us some $ for food over the weekend while we recoup, so I will add that to our permitted takeout budget. That puts our permitted total to a staggering $900.
First week update, in Canadian dollars…
Joint
$79 Groceries
$60 Gas for trip
$91 ferry for trip
$230
Personal
$78 socks - good quality ones
$78
$230 + $78 = $308 Total
DBro#1, who is visiting, insisted on paying for all food yesterday while we were traveling.
This week:
$552.42 groceries / $247.58 left (i’m going to have to re-budget this because i know we’re going to spend roughly $200/week each week. this week was high because we needed tp, paper towels, coffee, olive oil - lots of stuff we buy in bulk needed to be re-stocked)
$67.63 restaurant/takeout / $532.37 left
$161/800 groceries
$84/400 restaurants - higher than planned but 2/3 of us had a bad cold and desperately needed pho and soup
Our pharmacy/health budget is through the roof for the month but that averages out over the year so I’m not tracking as part of budgetober.
Off to a reasonable start although the B&B season hasn’t ended so I’m trying to separate out that part of the grocery spending.
Spend so far
| Item | Cost | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Broadband | 40 | Monthly |
| Electric | 220 | Monthly |
| Council tax | 241 | Monthly |
| Mobile phones x 2 | 20 | Monthly |
| Property insurance inc public liability | 80 | Monthly |
| Netflix | 11 | Monthly |
| Kindle unlimited | 9.5 | Monthly |
| Groceries | 101 | Week 1 |
| Total | 722.5 |
£723/1500
Weather has been seriously wet so no desire to go out to eat. We never order take out for delivery as it’s really expensive and they would probably never find us in daylight let alone in the dark!
I sat down and tried to figure out our stable recurring expenses (including those billed annually or on some other weird cycle) as a baseline to understanding our monthly expenditures:
| expense | per month cost |
|---|---|
| Mortgage P&I | $1,607.18 |
| Property tax | $791.75 |
| Health insurance | $307.00 |
| Car insurance (2 cars) | $87.00 |
| Home insurance | $79.16 |
| Flood insurance | $61.25 |
| Dental insurance | $56.00 |
| Vision insurance | $19.70 |
| Umbrella insurance | $16.67 |
| Property tax protestation fee | $13.10 |
| CSP fee | $7.92 |
| Google Nest Premium | $5.33 |
| Google Storage | $1.78 |
| Internet | $71.14 |
| bug extermination - q2mo | $37.89 |
| bug extermination - annual | $11.64 |
| TOTAL | $3,174.50 |
I didn’t count our more fluctuating monthly recurring expenses in there yet as I figure I will track those as they come in in Oct. So far… it’s looking high, though most of the Mortgage P&I is interest, so it’s always been philosophically grey for me whether to count it as an expense or exclude it as a transfer in equity.
In addition to the $3103.36, here’s what we’ve spent so far in Oct:
| Category | SUM of Amount |
|---|---|
| Service & Parts | $790.19 |
| Groceries | $131.39 |
| Restaurants | $40.41 |
| Clothing | $33.73 |
| Coffee Shops | $5.55 |
| Gifts & Donations | $4.00 |
| TOTAL | $1,005.27 |
The $790 Service & Parts was an unplanned expense that involved needing to replace a cylinder, spark plug, and alternator belt for mr. flan’s car + an oil change while they were at it anyway. Honestly, something always come up every month so I’m glad it appeared this month so it may as well be worked in as a buffer since there are other costs that pop up over the year that may not appear in October.
In sum, we’re already at $4,179.77/$6,000 budgeted for the month so I’m a bit apprehensive since we haven’t had our water/electricity/gas bills come due yet, and we still need food/gas etc before we even get to the fun stuff.
Woo, first check-in! Things are going well so far.
Spending this week:
Total: $1401.42
Nothing unexpected here. The amusement park ticket wiped out the amount I usually budget for gifts (which I feel like happens every month), so I pulled a bit from my fun money and misc categories. I was originally planning to get tickets for two people, so this works out a bit better. No regrets here. My partner & I got free tickets through my work but neither of us have a car to get there, so this arrangement works out for everyone.
I was expecting my 401k contributions to kick in with this paycheck, but they didn’t. I sent a few emails and that should be resolved for next paycheck, but I guess we’ll see.
I haven’t done the savings math I wanted to do this month, but I still have a few weeks. I did sit down and review my September expenses, though. Things are going well so far!
Checking in after doing well this week.
One grocery trip with some more paying attention to prices than normal: $124.52 / 500
Take out pizza, new place for delicious bibimbop, and some not-good Panda Express at a service station we’re the restaurants: $83.24 / 500.
Yesterday DH fielded a phone call from his mother, a party planner. We talked her out of getting cups for the canned/bottled beverages we plan to have (hitting Costco for spindrift, water, maybe some Coke products). Unfortunately her sister bought a single-use high chair garland which I repeatedly said we didn’t want. You can’t stop these people. But! We paid the final chunk of the space rental and then paid off the credit card. Headcount coming in a little lower than 50 so we’ll save a bit on food. Decided it’s only a 2 hour afternoon party from 12-2 so we won’t be doing alcohol. That’s a big savings. Oy vey. No parties for the next 4 years!!!
I don’t know how to make a cute little table like people do so I just took a screenshot of my spreadsheet. So far, things are on track. BUT we might need to adjust later because we impulsively decided that the Boy (my husband) and BB (my 12yo) should take a 15 hour round trip to see the annular eclipse, at the latter’s request. I’m hoping to keep costs down.
I also might not have budgeted enough for the Boy’s fast food- he has changed his routine to eat out pretty much every day he is at the office (2x week). He is EXTREMELY low spend but just really, really hates to pack a lunch. It is a hard no for him. And he was buying groceries to make sandwiches at work but the ingredient would go bad before he could use them.
This budget challenge is well-timed because I unexpectedly didn’t get child support this month and am unlikely to get any until January at the earliest (discussion in my journal).
First check in! I realized my initial post was rather (deliberately? lol) vague, so here are my explicit goals, along with this week’s progress/lack thereof.
Food budget: Aiming for $800 for the month (this includes some food for myself and for my partner; we kinda sorta split this evenly?). Spent $192 this week 
holy mother of coffee my love of fun beverages is doing me in
Misc budget: I had some planned but expensive purchases this week, so I’m giving myself a $150 budget for the rest of the month (and that includes clothes, which I wasn’t originally going to do, but after a bit of a Darn Tough sock extravaganza…yeah).
This week I’m going to aim for a no-buy, excluding food and if I need to replace something I actively use that breaks.
You can copy and paste the table.
Week 1
| Amount | Purpose |
|---|---|
| $1,287.66 | mortgage (PITI) |
| $12.34 | extra principal on mortgage (brings it to an even 1300) |
| $2.50 | Patreon |
| $10.86 | subscriptions |
| $64.45 | grocery |
| $35.30 | pet (diabetic testing supplies) |
| $89.99 | internet |
| $157.50 | auto registration (3 years) |
| $1,650.60 | total |
Goal: $4,000
Stretch Goal: $3,500
So far so good.
Have not done the big warehouse club shop that I desperately need, though.
And, big pet expense at the end of the month still to come.
Here we go. Overspent the shopping category already because we got some new to us used patio furniture. Otherwise, doing just fine.
| Monthly Budget Items | Monthly Spend | Monthly Budget | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Required expenses | ||||
| Nanny | 10 | 2000 | ice cream outting for the kids | |
| Preschool | 40 | 260 | Glass gift | |
| Mortgage | 1303 | 1303 | ||
| Electricity | 157 | 135 | ||
| internet | 40 | |||
| cell phone | 30 | |||
| Groceries | 173 | 800 | ||
| Pharmacy | 20 | |||
| Household (includes diapers/pullups) | 100 | |||
| Clothes | 40 | 100 | DD shirt, DH flip flops | |
| Gasoline | 450 | |||
| Parking/tolls | 20 | |||
| Work accounting | 125 | |||
| Medical copays | 20 | 100 | ||
| tractive | 8 | |||
| Atm withdrawal | 200 | |||
| Things that enrich our lives | ||||
| Gifts/charity | 100 | |||
| Toddler Outings | 80 | |||
| Shopping | 200 | 80 | used patio furnture set | |
| Gym | 89 | 89 | ||
| kindle (bookclub) | 15 | |||
| youtube tv | 10 | 10 | ||
| Things that give us a break | ||||
| Babysitting | 25 | 150 | saw local football game | |
| Housekeeper | 160 | 160 | ||
| restaurants/fast food/ice cream | 6 | 250 | ||
| Monthly | 2233 | 6625 | ||
| Annual Budget Items | Monthly Spend | YTD Spend | Annual Budget | |
| Required expenses | ||||
| Car Maintenance | 0 | 1538 | 2000 | |
| Insurance (Home, car, umbrella, camper, my life insurance) | 0 | 3372 | 3400 | |
| Nanny’s workmans comp | 0 | 1019 | 650 | |
| Property taxes | 0 | 2700 | 5400 | |
| Oil | 0 | 1398 | 2000 | |
| Propane | 0 | 338 | 450 | |
| Home Improvement | 0 | 12767 | 1200 | |
| Malpractice Insurance | 0 | 1109 | 1109 | |
| The dog | 0 | 686 | 1000 | |
| Hair cuts hubs | 0 | 125 | 175 | |
| Me hair cuts | 0 | 220 | 220 | |
| Me state licensing | 0 | 208 | 208 | |
| Things that enrich our lives | ||||
| Conferences/CEUs | 0 | 0 | 500 | |
| Work supplies | 0 | 366 | 200 | |
| Concert tickets | 0 | 150 | 200 | |
| Swim/ski lessons | 0 | 510 | 700 | |
| Summer camp | 0 | 274 | 275 | |
| Hotels/air bnbs | 0 | 1647 | 1300 | |
| Camping fees | 0 | 1982 | 2000 | |
| Sports spending | 0 | 7085 | 1000 | |
| Annual Totals | 0 | 37494 | 23987 | |
| Total monthly spending | 2233 | |||
| Annual budgeted spend | 103487 | |||
| Monthly budgeted spend | 8624 | |||
| Annual income needed | 120643 |
Check-In #1 (10/7):
I’m just trying to spend less than $2,100 for the whole month. So far I’ve spent $474.47 and I have $1625.53 leftover. However, I have a $400+ credit card bill coming up, and I’m planning on paying my HOA check for November before October 31 ($226.42). So really I have about $900 left for the next three weeks. If I get less takeout and get back into cooking for myself, I should be ok. The hardest part is gonna be eating lunch at work. The mini fridge that’s supposed to hold everyone’s lunches is always too full, and I kinda hate packing PB&J and chips like I’m a little kid. I gotta find a more filling sack lunch that doesn’t need refrigeration.
Invest in a cooler bag and an ice pack!
Back to Brag: I called my internet provider to try to negotiate a lower price. I got bill down to $17 per month for a whole year! I do qualify for internet assistance through my state, but this is an even lower price than what I was paying with the state discount alone.
