Thank you.
For me it involves just getting my rear up and putting myself to bed instead of mindlessly scrolling my phone or watching stupid tv with RLG. The other night when I failed at getting to bed on time it was because I fell asleep on the couch at 7:30 and then woke up an hour later but didn’t go to bed. Basically my self discipline is lacking.
I have not actually bought anything I want yet for the house, because I’m debating the wisdom of adding another hobby to my life at this very moment (it is not wise, and yet I may do it anyway).
However, I also remembered another thing I want for the house – spice racks. That, at least, is a thing that can easily happen.
Woo! Learning new things!
Thank you! That helped! I was all backward. I have now updated my loan account to be accurate and reconciled both it and my primary checking in YNAB. Oh yeah!
This week’s damage:
-$286.52/$400 food (much of this is tea. I now have enough tea to open my own shop lol)
-$35.72/$50 clothes
-$72.23/$60 household (I couldn’t resist some seasonal soap scents, what can I say?)
-$99/$150 recreation/health
-$3/$50 misc
Grocery spending is creeping up, but I WILL STAY IN BUDGET GOSHDURNIT
Checking in a little late. My week was good until Friday night when I went to the pub to watch the football and somehow ended up being out until 3am and spending far too much money on booze. Though overall I am still under budget for the month so far
Have spent over my food budget for the month but it’s mostly a supermarket gift card I bought to save 5%, which will be spent over the next couple months. $529.16/$400 groceries. Also bought a coffee out from fun money. No one really wants to see the whole budget breakdown but doing well so far.
Cars eh? Well done for getting that sorted from cash flow though, and leaving the e-fund alone, that must feel good…
Love the juxtaposition of future couches and treadmills. Speaking as someone with a home gym, you will benefit from having the one for the other, and vice-versa…
New around here, so I could be wrong, but seems to me that being able to let one’s hair down occasionally, without going over-budget, reads as an overall win for budgeting…
Office 2/5 I was tired in the mornings and didn’t felt like seeing people etc. No office day this week
Groceries: €170 / €250 bought meet to freeze, otherwise only vegs etc so still on track
Eating out: €68 / €50 busted this ones, I had friends over and we had take out for dinner twice. When setting the budget I completely forgot that they would come for the weekend
Splurges: €40 / €50
As in Europe and also in Germany Covid case are rising I am not looking for cloth and will stay at home.
Hopefully that will be good for the budget
Confession: I bought myself the new Taylor Swift cd because in my heart I am a tween girl and I love her. However, I did not buy it on amazon. Did I blow my budget?
I think it depends on the goal of that bullet point - was it to avoid unnecessary purchases at all or to avoid amazon shopping?
The way I know you’re not a Real Tween is you bought a CD
Just move things around!
Hahaha so true! RLG and I were just having a conversation yesterday where he literally said, “how do kids get music these days?” We really don’t know. Spotify? iTunes is basically obsolete I think so idk? Do they own music anymore? Or just rent it?
It started as the latter because that IS where I spend most liberally, but TBH I probably should have made it the former.
Here’s my soapbox about my opinion of challenges, haha
I think we each have different motivations and different relationships with money. For me, a successful challenge isn’t necessarily one in which I made no mistakes, but one where I learned more about my money habits and the things in my life that cause me to make certain choices.
Sticking 100% to a budget is a worthy goal, for sure, but if it’s easy to do then are we really learning anything valuable that can help us down the road when we might end up having to make hard choices?
We each have to make the call for ourselves, but I always err on the side of gaining information and figuring how how to work with my impulses, as opposed to feeding any guilt/shame/giving up type of notions.
So for me personally I’d probably just rebalance some of your categories like anomalily suggested, and then work through what you just did about what this bullet point goal really means in your big picture.
No matter how you go about it I don’t think it’s a fail at all!
Update:
I reviewed the history of the Business category and it’s been close to two years since I used it. Unfortunately I didn’t actually write down what it was for, but I think I had some auto-payments through PayPal coming from the wrong source, so things got mixed up. But obviously that’s been cleared up now. So I split the money up: some went to the emergency fund, some was transferred to my business account.
- Credit card category: 431.20
- Family Fun & Festivals category: 34.09
- Stupid Work Stuff category: 4.01
- Babysitting category:
- Business category:
I think this is a great way of looking at it, and a way for the challenges to be of more use to us all.*
*True confession, though; I’m in it entirely for the badges - I don’t even do stickers usually!
Thats very true!
External motivation in a very cute way? Heck yeah!
Goal for the month was $700 for groceries.
We did ur big food shopping for the month yesterday and the total is now $479.59. One more stop and we should be good for the rest of the month. I think we’ll finish off in the low $600s