I have found value in being able to track back to what I got Kiddo in prior years for birthdays and Christmas, so either Gift or Latte Gift if doing just Gift would lead to to many other results later.
My Octobers have all been really hectic and spendy since leaving grad school and joining OMD (can we have a March or April budget challenge? I would rock that! Lol jk)
October is my and spouse bday, book Xmas travel month, start Xmas shopping month. I might also have work travel and def have Work Busy Period. All of this is hard to predict.
But I was thinking the other day that a lot of my bad decisions (food, spending, stuff buying) come from āI deserve a treatā mentality and how thatās pervasive in our culture, so I thought I might focus on that for a bit, and it might be extra helpful to do so in a stressful time when I feel I donāt have spare willpower.
My cute new planner has an expense tracking page and I want to use it to track discretionary spending, ie my wants or physical stuff. For Reasons I have decided not to include social work lunch or coffee on my way in, but include when I get prepared lunch as a break/treat.
Right now the tally is $374, mostly due to pulling the trigger on some clothes purchases Tuesday of which:
$150-200 for replacements for worn out/ill fitting items
$38 covered by ThredUp credits
$34 is 2 sushi lunches
I want to try to stay under $750 with a stretch goal of $600. There is another large purchase I am considering but props if I procrastinate!
Snacks to jump higher this weekend because headed to the beach, will need lots of chips. Stationery should stay low for now because StickerCon is next weekend! And I hope to buy gifts for my stationery friends there too
Misc expenses included chapstick and then filters for my Brita pitcher. I mostly use the water pitcher just to have cold water. The filter in there was probably cough uhhhh cough no idea how old. Why I decided I needed to get new filters this month is beyond me, but oh well. Also apparently emergency ice cream is a thing. Because duh.
And now I keep online window shopping for pants. Send help.
Iāve spent $180 on groceries, which is low, but Iāve been busy and havenāt been to the store all that much. (I buy all the groceries and am reimbursed 50%.)
But we did spend $110 on Indian food takeout because it was dhās birthday, per family tradition, which made me think about what I really want to work on which is bumpy categories for celebrations, medical, and car expenses.
Celebrations needs to include birthday gifts, takeout, and Christmas expenses and I need to think through what is reasonable to spend on that.
Car should include insurance, maintenance, and stuff like those darned tires. Naturally tires went on sale at Costco this month. So annoying!
Medical remains an opaque category. Outside of paying dhās Medicare premium (mine comes out of my ss and is thus pretty invisible) we havenāt had many expenses this year, but thatās going to change mildly as I really and truly am going to sign up for a PCP and make an appointment and get an inhaler prescription, yes I am.
And yet the Medicare payments are supposed to go down next year. Also, the OTC coverage on my account pretty much covers the OTC for the whole household.
Okay Iāve gotten oven my guilt paralysis about how high the general household category has been, and Iāll just share my goal number here.
Week 1 checkin:
$73.70/$322
Part two, understand whatās in this bucket more:
Kleenex and liners, $20- true household
Three pack of leak detectors for the house- $53.70 arguably home improvement if I was tracking more granular going forward. These have been on the to do list for ages but I always got overwhelmed looking at brands. I finally found someone in a PF FB group recommend a brand so I just bought that one to get over decision paralysis lol. Still in this category is a power alarm for the chest freezer, I need to do that.
Things I cancelled: Audible (and used up my sitting credits), Prime (had done a month trial I. August and forgot to cancel last month so this was v new), Athletic Brewing subscription. Bonus, a cheap strength training subscription I was going to keep actually ended because the person who runs it has too much going on. Total saved around $65-70 so far.
Spending for mutual aid group:
From my own money:
10/2 $60 harm reduction supplies
10/7 $25.32 ingredients for bagged lunches
10/8 $4.99 stickers
(This was an expected heavy week, others should be lighter!)
From group funds:
10/2 $9.98 - bottled water and pretzels
10/5 $Value $18.90 (med supplies/toiletries), rite aid $4.99 bottled water
Encouraging Sweaty to spend on things he enjoys or making him let me spend a totally reasonable imo amount of money on him:
10/5 Venmoed him $20 for fun activity, he did fun activity with me.
10/6 I got takeout after work and successfully didnāt let him pay me back ~$35 (we do takeout/eating out V infrequently)
Successful week so far! Things I spent rather a lot on were planned expenses and likely not trends that will continue this month
So my goal is to track non-need spending - fun money, krewe expenses, basically anything that is not a bill, groceries, or cat supplies. It hasnāt been too much this week.
Fun money:
$18.55 birthday gift for friend
$1.25 Public transport fare to get home from friendās party
Krewe expenses:
$24.82, $26.34: paint and embellishments for set building. This includes replacing Boyfriendās paint that I used up.
I kept putting off committing, but here it is: Iām too overwhelmed to attempt a full budget this October, given Iām still recovering from my first (only??) round of covid last month. BUT food expenses are my biggest spending category that reacts to my actions immediately (unlike my less-adjustable rent and utilities costs). And my spending has crept upwards in not-entirely-inflation ways.
So. Budget of $300 for groceries and eating out combined.
I love everything about Halloween - except actual horror movies and horror novels for I scare easily and it lingers for days/months/years. But costumes! Candy! bringing my Halloween plates and mugs down from the storage shelf and replacing all the dish/hand towels in the house with bat, ghost, and apothecary prints!
Week 1 check-in (before I go meet up with a friend and their significant other whoāre unexpectedly passing through Denver and probably blow a good portion of my restaurant budget):
Trying to get a handle on both my grocery budget and make it an eat-down-the-pantry type monthā¦I tried to start last month when I realized how much random stuff I had remaining from just-in-case covid stock up over the past couple years but then spent a good part of the month out of town for work so aside from re-doing my whiteboards that didnāt go too far.
The plan is to focus on fresh produce at the grocery store with some wiggle room to stock up on protein if I see a good saleā¦and a little for snacks and other stuff if I see something I know Iāll use quickly so I donāt feel guilty if thereās a really good sale, but want to try to avoid that as much as possible.
For the first week of October, I came in at $60. For a budget of $300, that looks okay as itās under the $75/week average - but as itās mostly from eating out, thatās actually a huge chunk of the budget for a small number of meals and drinks.
I need to grocery shop on either Sunday or Monday, so I will be making an actual meal plan, checking whatās already on-hand, and creating a complete list before I wander the aisles.
Total fuel in October so far: $172.36 ($39.19 gasoline and $132.89 diesel). Slightly elevated because this has been week from hell and we had to drive separately to work Monday so he could go to the doc with an allergic reaction to medication. He had to stay home Tuesday (all ok now) but I still had to drive in.
Food so far this month: $113.94 grocery and $36.59 eating out. Eating out will go up further today at the event.
Do we spend more than we bring home mystery? Well, not yet, but my bet is on yes. $187 out on decent-looking sports clothing for him last night so he could take politician for a taste of said sport while hobnobbing about his research. Gear was desperately needed - old was more hole than fabric.
Yeah, we do pretty much all spending one one credit card which I pay off monthly from one checking account, so I get the same thing. The mystery is really whether itās happening regularly. I keep a good buffer In checking that obscures it a bit.
At first I simply rolled over (ober?) from my September bad habits into this month. But by tripping over my own tail and finally paying attention mid-week, and specifically by downloading Plum, at Lilianās suggestion, I have now pledged to stop any spending for a week or more. My food order came today, and there are no other bills until my next lot of money comes in on the 17th, so any spending now would be frivolous and/or emotional. Which is what Iāve been doing for a long time now. And it needs to stop.
I have also managed to save Ā£108 in the Plum savings account and some more in my account with better interest (which Plum canāt link with, unfortunately). The second one is the account Iāve been doing most of my sneaky spending on, but the interest just went up again to 2 percent, so itād be foolish not to stuff it with moneys if I can.
Anyway, for me, this is a big victory! Letās see if I can keep the no-spending streak going until the next set of bills come due.
Goals for this coming week:
Continue not spending streak (and boy have I been tempted)
Have a look again at my budget document, and get it up to date on regular payments going out, bcos over the last few months, these have grown exponentially.
Bonus points if I manage to cull a few subscriptions etc. I donāt need
of which:
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