I didn’t have a fridge or microwave at work and got a lil baby thermos for food and it was SO worth it
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Checking in.
Spent $28.75 at the farmers’ market. That leaves $313.56 left for the month. Doing the big shop tomorrow. Happy to say that I did not go grocery shopping at all during the week (although it helps that I didn’t have the time!).
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Definitely in! September has been rough, spending-wise, and I haven’t had the bandwidth/energy to sit down to really look at my spending & reevaluate my budget since my living situation has changed. My goals this month involve:
- Reevaluate my budget categories with my new living situation (lower rent, higher groceries) as well as estimate the need to create new budget categories
- Reevaluate sinking funds & save to put more $ in them
- Evaluate student loan payments (applying to be on the SAVE plan; check PSLF status)
- Low - cost month to work towards savings goals for the year & balance out September.
My favorite thing about fall is breaking out my sweaters and enjoying the nice autumn stews & baked goods! I love the excuse to do cozy things as the rainy season starts here in the PNW.
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Week 1 check-in (also sorry about the back-to-back-- I didn’t realize I didn’t hit post on the other entry until literally a week later…)
On-track for all spending categories except for groceries, which was a little high-- I’m already at $94/$250 but hoping I got enough to stretch for 2 weeks, which will balance everything out again.
In terms of other overall goals, I applied for the SAVE plan and am waiting to hear back, and also made sure my auto-debit was set up with my loan provider. Still need to carve out time to think about budget categories and sinking funds.
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Check in #1
Balances:
$221.61 groceries
$108.40 restaurants
$150.00 personal
$38.89 clothing
Shoes cost $52, but they are the wrong size! I bought same make/model as in the past (online), but these don’t fit. Not returnable, because they were used (lightly) on Poshmark. There isn’t enough left in the budget to buy another pair (probably). I will wait, and, if nothing else comes up, will use the magic wand to recast this line item.
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Why not just reposh them?
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Checking in for week one! My goal for budgetober is just to get an accurate idea of how much I am currently spending on things considering I’m going through a big life change. I am trying to reduce needless “fun” spending and ESPECIALLY reduce my spending on take out… I am two months into using YNAB and it has a steep learning curve but I think I’m getting the hang of it and it’s kind of exciting!
Here’s what I’ve spent so far in October
$24,287 - down payment on house
$43 - groceries
$58 - restaurants
$22 - gas for my car
$14.99 - monthly Spotify subscription
$274 - unexpected car repairs
$86 - “just for fun” (October is my birthday month so this is mostly cake, drinks, birthday dinner, etc)
$313 - new home purchases (had to install blinds on all the windows and shelving in all the closets)
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week one check in:
I’ve been tracking purchases on paper and then plugging them into the spreadsheet and I am so annoyed at my little game purchases and having to add them each time even though they only add up to $5. so mini challenge for week 2 is no game purchases.
just listing variable spending here. canadian dollars.
groceries: 190.38/400 higher than normal for first week because I did a costco run and its canadian thanksgiving, so i was picking up extras.
restaurants and treats: 99.64/200 had lunch with a friend and took my niblings out for doughnuts, so higher than normal.
patreon: 18.09/18 I’m considering cutting all my patreon subs but some of them are friends i want to support and since I’m still under $20, it doesn’t seem like cutting it will make a huge difference in my overall budget
physiotherapist: 17/68 weekly copay
donations: 25/100
hobbies: 15.15/100 one knitting pattern, a few in-app purchases for the silly phone game
personal/household: 24/400
streaming: 0/30
house cleaner: 0/140
therapy: 0/70
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We managed to just stay under week one’s allocated food budget. Here is hoping we can do the same for week 2. We have a solid meal plan which should help. Now we just need to stick to it.
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Coffee:
$13.61. $15.23, $12.19 = $41.03
Takeout:
$21.36, $7.54, $14.31, $79.77, $9.50, $8.69 = $141.17
Entertainment:
$14.58 (awesome socks club), $42.40, $5.00, $37.03, $4.00 = $103.01
Education:
$110.19 (textbooks)
Health:
$73.80 (skincare & allergie medication)
This week my roommate got Covid!!! So I have been isolating at a friend’s house. This has all been really scary and exhausting, and it’s also the week where my allergies have been the worst on TOP of all of that, AND the week that my new insurance kicked in, so I had to wait until Friday to get a PCR so my whole week has just been WILD. My favorite shop of all time, Go! Ice Cream, is also closing PERMANENTLY, so I bought $79 of ice cream in pint sizes to keep the magic alive a little longer in my freezer. It’s been such a weird, although not necessarily bad! week. Eugh.
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Week 1 check in: $137 on groceries. That’s a lot more than I usually spend in a trip, but I got a lot of pantry staples that should last me through the month. No spending so far on eating out or my meal prep service, so overall this week I came in just under my total budget goal for food!
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Week 1 check in
In budget normal spending
Groceries $274.22/$725 we do groceries on Saturday, so this is two weeks of groceries and a trip for preemptive new house move-in day dinner
Eating out $0/$75
Alcohol purchased from the DABC/liquor store/etc $0/$25
Snacks $15/$25
Off budget unusual spending
Food/snacks while traveling for work - reimbursed through per diem $100.15 -
Celebratory bubbly wine for move-in day $28.55
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Updating late since getting back late from birthday trip (show was great, food was great, 16th St Mall is a mess, but fortunately Union Station is within easy walking distance so we wandered over there and killed our extra time people-and-train watched instead)
| Target | Oct 1-7 | Oct 8-14 | Oct 15-21 | Oct 22-28 | Oct 29-31 | Total | Remaining | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Food | 300 | 120 | 120 | 180 | ||||
| Electric | 75 | 0 | 0 | 75 | ||||
| Hobbies | 30 | 19 | 19 | 11 | ||||
| Health | 50 | 13 | 13 | 37 | ||||
| Cat | 230 | 122 | 122 | 108 | ||||
| Travel | NA | 0 | 0 | NA | ||||
| Gifts | NA | 68 | 68 | NA |
About half the food was for the ‘fancy’ dinner and a drink before the show, the rest was fresh stuff that’ll hopefully last for the next 2-ish weeks. I do appreciate getting into winter squash season since those last much better than a lot of summer vegetables.
Hobbies are almost certainly going to trigger my recast, though. The $19 is what I’ve been charged for patreons thus far, but the local water-sport store is having an end-of-season sale, and a fair amount of my kayak gear is at the end of its useful life for actual whitewater use. Going to see if I can get some other stuff posted for sale to offset, though, since the sale lasts to the end of the month.
Everything else is pretty average…health is about where expected at this point, and cat food is paused for a month but I did put in a large order for litter since they had a $30 coupon off a $100 purchase and it’s not like litter goes bad. Also picked up a set of three cloth books for new nephling (rest of Christmas gift will be 529 donation) and a set of infused cooking oils for the cat sitter.
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Okay checking in and updating with some actual goals.
Big goals:
-
Figure out how much partner and I have spent collectively since September 2022 when we moved abroad, and when any sort of financial tracking fully imploded
Update: I have actually made a lot of progress on this. Downloaded all bank/credit card transactions for the past 12 months from all of my US accounts and from our one Egyptian account, and have basically every transaction nicely categorized. Next step is to see if I can get the same for partner’s US accounts to put it all together. -
Figure out the easiest system to track this going forward (for two currencies and two people who have joint finances but no actual joint accounts) so that I don’t have to play catch-up like this again!!!
Update: I am hoping that if I just download statements from each account once a month this won’t be too much of a hassle. Previously I felt like the big stumbling block was that most of our day-to-day spending is in cash and thus really hard to track. I think I have now just accepted that the best we can do is track how much cash we withdraw from ATMs each month (which we can track via the bank) and just not worry about what it actually goes to. This means that I won’t really know how much we actually spend for several categories, but I guess I can at least try to make a note of larger cash purchases (maybe more than ~$20 or so?). Currently the things we pay for mostly/exclusively with cash include: restaurants, gas/electric bills, language classes, alcohol, and occasional housecleaner.
So, actual update for October 1-7 to try this out:
Spending in Egyptian Pounds (LE)
Groceries: 681 LE / $22
Cash withdrawals: 6000 LE / $194 (600 for a pickleball lesson, 500 to go parasailing, 2800 for weekend trip transportation, probably ~2000 for beers over the weekend)
Eating out: Estimating 750 LE / $24? (I know we ate out twice last week and paid with a card but the bank is super slow with clearing transactions so this is a mystery for now!)
Spending in USD
Vacation: $337 (hotel for weekend trip):
Clothes: $40 (new running shoes on Poshmark for a friend to bring back from the US for me!)
Fun stuff: $16 (half marathon registration)
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Week 1:
Goal 1 - blocking out time for priorities - one planned session, one unplanned session, C+
Goal 2 - In bed by 10 pm: 3/7 days; Up by 7 am: 4/7 days
Goal 3 - Plan each day the day before: 6/7 days
I had a LOT of resistance to getting to bed by 10 pm. The times I did make it, it was literally like 9:59 or 10pm on the dot. There’s only 2 nights most weeks that I could not be in bed by 9 pm, and I think I would feel better if I got to bed earlier, but I’m really fighting it.
Planning out each day beforehand makes each day go better.
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Late but still here 
Earlier this week i took account of all the non-life essential automatic payments coming out of my accounts (Disney+, a exercise app, and a organization app) and halved my Patreon signups.
My dad went into the hospital on Wednesday, so all thoughts of budgeting flew out of my head. But one weird side effect is that I only spent $10 getting dad a coffee and a snack at Starbucks, and have also done no grocery shopping, so my weekly spending for the first part of the month is:
$14 in Patreon subscriptions (down from $30)
$10 Coffee shop
For the upcoming week i’m going to keep looking for and tracking expenses. Hopefully i can still figure out what normal expenses are with all this drama.
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I forgot to mention: my actual hard number goal this month is to get “non-essential” spending under $100.
So with Patreon and Starbucks, we’re at $24/$100 after the first week.
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The previous week was pretty good. Out of the 5 work days in the office, I went out to eat during lunch 2 times + and on Friday I bought a pumpkin muffin. So that’s like 2.5 times. That is pretty good for me. Going into next week I’m going to see if I can lower that number even more.
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I hope your dad is okay 
Good idea. I have Reposhed them now. But if they don’t sell before month end, then there won’t be enough in the budget to replace them.
It’s not like I’m going shoeless. I have three pairs I wear in rotation; this year it’s this pairs turn to be replaced. I can wait a bit to replace them.
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