Maybe you’ve been spending a bit too much on take-away orders , and want to dial it back a bit. One months seems doable!
Hi.
I… am yet again embarrassed by my food spending! More sad is sometimes I’ll order food delivered out of convenience rather than true desire for delicious food, and then it shows up and isn’t even that great and why did I just spend $40 on food when I spend 2 weeks agonizing over the price increase of one board expansion of $6!?
I want to record my grocery vs. takeout/delivery spending and keep the total below $610 for 2 people in Oct ($10pp/day). Hopefully this means I am more selective of when I order restaurant delivery and also enjoy it more because it is more special.
Ok so after calculating my massive expenses (mostly due to living in a super expensive area and being in a lot of debt) my estimated spending is 3258.76. My goal is to be within $100 of this number. My estimate income (I will be starting a new job, plus having to pay back my FSA amount so this is a rough estimate of my take home pay) $3800. I am tracking with my app and also an excel spreadsheet to compare estimated spend to actual.
I want to allocate the rest to debt payments as my savings is between 1-2 months of income right now.
I actually set up my YNAB budget last week or so and would love to join as a way to have an accountability check! My goal is that I use YNAB daily or weekly to learn both how to use the program better, and to practice sticking to my budget. Since I’m really new at it I’m hoping to learn if I budgeted enough money in each category. I’m hoping I won’t need to use my magic wand until the end or mid-way through the month.
If you feel like YNAB is wonkadoo partway through the month, never fear, it makes a lot more sense with a full month behind you! We’ll be cheering you on regardless
I’m in! I’ve gotten a little slack this year because my spending habits are so different than the last time I really took the time to set my budget. I’ve been loosely following one and am looking forward to using October to reflect and reset. Going to try to stick to the budget lines below for two adults (mortgage, loans, and insurance not included)
This month, I want to focus on the grocery budget. Covid has done a number on our grocery amounts and I need to reign it in a bit. Any leftover money will go into the Emergency Fund.
So. This month, I am setting our goal to $700 for the month of October for all groceries.
I’m not sure if he would be considered Halloween-themed, but I’m obsessed with the Gillman. Give me all GM things. He’s a heartthrob.
OK, my goal for October is mostly about thinking: I want to figure out what to do with certain budget categories. Some of them are probably over-full–we’re not using them due to the pandemic. And some of them I’m… well, not entirely sure what’s going on with them!
Credit card category: At some point last month I noticed that it was negative. This makes no sense to me. It’s entirely possible that this is expected behavior for YNAB’s credit card categories and I just never noticed because the way YNAB handles credit cards confuses me and I keep them hidden. I’ve now un-hidden one credit card category so I can keep an eye on it. (It deeply confuses me that if I spend in a category on the 10th with the credit card but am still within budget, then spend more in the category on the 25th from my checking account, YNAB treats the overspending as though it happened on the credit card. This surprises me every time! Now that I’m thinking about it, I guess it surprises me because when I enter the overspending transaction, I am not immediately alerted to the overspend–I don’t see that it happened until either I look at my budget and happen to see the negative number [which I usually don’t because it turns yellow, and a lot of my categories are yellow anyway due to not filling them in accordance with goals, so it doesn’t catch my eye and any overspending should turn red but anyway] or until I look at the credit card account and am suddenly confronted with an overspending I don’t remember doing.)
Anyway. That was a rant. Bottom line: goal for October, keep an eye on that one credit card account.
Reconsider the goal and how full “Family Fun/Festivals” category is (there was no Sheep & Wool or Renn Fest this year, will there be next year?)
Reconsider how full “Stupid Work Stuff” category is (will I ever have to buy donuts for my coworkers again?)
Reconsider how full “Babysitting” category is (will I ever trust a babysitter who isn’t related in my house? MIL is willing to occasionally babysit for free!)
Figure out why I have a “Business” category when I have a separate account for my business (I blame PayPal)
Bonus:
Figure out whether I can shut down my one pen name website or move it to a cheaper hosting solution–the current hosting is fairly inexpensive, but I’m not maintaining the website or in fact trying to make money writing/publishing, so I’d like to save the money
I’ve been using it for over a year now, and I’ve only just started to budget for a month (or two, depending) ahead rather than just overbudgeting the current month to roll into the next.
On the one hand, I’ll probably continue to overbudget/roll over certain categories (like savings goals), but it really doesn’t make sense to do that for bills.
I want to be in but deciding what to do is a bit of a challenge. October isn’t usually a big spending month for me but my mom is coming for a visit and then I am traveling back to NY with her, so I’ll be in vacation-spend mode. My mom and I have a joint vacation fund, so there is money but some of the spending will also spill over into my normal budget. And, since we are both very frugal in our normal lives, I don’t really feel like setting a goal of being frugal during our visit.
Hmmm… I’ll have to think more about this because badges and stickers!
ETA: My favorite Halloween-themed creature is werewolves/shifters or as I like to call them werves.
I’ve been tracking my expenses for the past two months, but haven’t proactively made a budget before so this is my first one. Mostly I just looked at what I have been spending and gave it a slightly bigger round number. I’m really focusing on getting my snack spending under control. And once that I get a handle on that, I can move on to focusing on cutting another category. It seems too extreme to try to cut back everything all at once. Having $400 leftover to put in the emergency fund feels great.
Currently, I’m using Buckets for tracking/budgeting but it just isn’t quite working for me, so I am thinking of putting together my own spreadsheet. Maybe this will get me working on that too.
Set bills
Rent - $808
CC payment - $275
Renters Insurance - $29
Life Insurance - $23
Apartment Utilities - $17
Variable spending
Groceries - $300
Donations - $100
Subscriptions - $72
Etc - $50
Laundry - $40
Gifts - $40
Restaurants - $30
Alcohol - $20
Snacks - $20 - Trying to cut this down significantly - have been averaging $80 the past few months, but really don’t like that I’ve been spending this much. I may just need to stop buying snacks altogether because I definitely find that if I buy a snack one day I am much more likely to buy a snack the next day and so on. (Snacks are basically any food purchased outside the home that is eaten alone).
Best guess budgets
Pets - $300 - Little Cat has a vet appt because she’s not feeling well, but they’ll also do tests to see if she can get her dental. Dental probably won’t be until November but either way, I have no idea how much this will all cost.
Car - $300 - Have to get an oil change and probably get the brakes serviced. I think we have a prepaid oil change left, but I have no idea how much brakes cost.
Medical - $100 - Had some tests done, not sure what they’ll cost
Savings
Retirement - $150
E-fund - $400
Also, my favorite Halloween thing is black cats, obvs, but I also love those pumpkin tree branches they have at Trader Joe’s
I’d say it took me at least six months to see enough patterns to be useful and at least a year to really start to get ahead because of using the software.
I need a haircut. Grooming standards are a requirement of my job.
I do not currently have the skills to cut my own hair. I cannot gain these skills, and also stay within grooming standards. Therefore cutting my own hair is not in consideration.
I could get a $15 - $20 haircut from a walk in place. I don’t particularly want to, though. I spent a lot of years in the $15 hair cut zone. They sucked. I did not like the way I looked.
I could get an appt with the $40 hipster barber shop. It’s a local small business. I’ve been 4 times, and I always walk away with exactly what I ask for.
Is one place better complying with COVID precautions than the other? You need your health, too. (Not sure where you’re located these days–that may not be a relevant question.)
@Illathrael, @Rhubarbsoda: you know, the idea of splitting like that never even entered into my brain. At all. Clearly my grey matter does not function in that kind of way, but you guys answered within seconds of each other. Brains are funny, and intriguing. I thing mine is too rigid to split a single even into two mental categories.
@Clare-Dragonfly, the hipster place has excellent protocol. The walk-in place is unknown.
