Still dont have specific figures but have made some guesses with rough estimates that should get me to my 50% savings rate
Have been tracking all spending through my app, my spending has been lowish due to extra work hours so less time to spend money
Have got the list from my work of charities they match donations to and am trying to work out if its better to donate bigger amounts to less charities or smaller amounts to more? And if I want to stop donating to a few of the companies I was before and move to similar ones on the list.
First week we identified current state of things and I put together the target for investing that we could automate to until January, and then what it would look like in January once our take-home changes again.
I still need to regroup with the shadowy one on their preference of what we do
automate the money move and manually do the buy with QT (low mer)
manually do the money move and the buy with QT (low mer)
automate the money move and buy with TD (mid mer)
Once we have that sorted, we’ll adjust the current minimal automated buying with TD to either be higher, or replaced with QT.
I get to take home a bit of the excess fruit and veg from my volunteering which helps to supplement our costs. We’ve cut down on our meat consumption too to reduce costs (and environmental). It’s kind of a sinking fund though as if we have a low month we’ll carry over the next month.
Overhead is overhead. I should, of course reevaluate some of it. My subscriptions are creeping up - vimeo, youtube, hulu, audible.
The haircut is sofa king awesome, and has gotten me called by my CO ‘just to check in, heard you got a haircut.’
The commission was for the ship’s 2020 commemorative shirt. Astonishingly, no one on the ship can draw. It’s never happened to be before. And the commission is great. Done by someone in the Philippines for under minimum wage. Bummer, but still so cool
Brings us to the art. It’s the kind of want where it’s in your hot little hand before you even really register. Where you snatch it up before the universe somehow decides it was a mirage. Still a want, but the delightfully unambiguous kind
We are only feeding 2 people though, and I just remembered that husband gets fruit provided at his work so that helps too. Although i havent actually tallied up what our grocery spend has been for the last couple months since baby (and it was a bit higher while working from home/later stages of pregnancy due to increased snacks) so I might still be working on low, false numbers I’m interested to see where we shake out this month! I don’t want my numbers to make anyone think they need to reduce theirs though…
Rent: $650/$650
Groceries: $96/$200
PT: $45/$135
Bed: $0/$100
Internet: $0/$60
Auto Insurance: $0/$180
Renters Insurance: $46/$46
Gas: $0/$40
Supplements: $35/$40
Misc: $0/$50
Giving: $20/$20
Coffee (beans for home): $0/$30
Personal Care: $20/$20
Apple Music: $10/$10
Clothing: $0/$0- I returned the hoody that I purchased last week. Decided I didn’t really need it.
Unplanned extras: $15. I signed up for Disney+ for 1-2 months, so I can watch all of Star Wars again. This came from an attempt to find something fun to do at home when I’m having a bad pain day. I can’t do a lot right now physically but I can watch movies. It will take me at least 2 months to get through these since I can focus on a movie for at most an hour.
Groceries continue to be challenging. I took a trip to the international market in my city last weekend, and stocked up on a bunch of curry pastes, chili pastes and other ingredients. So that was a big chunk of my budget. Food+cooking is such a hobby for me that it is difficult to keep grocery spending to basic necessities…I need to either be ok with that, and have a higher budget, or decide that the hobby part can sit on the back burner for a while if I want to save more money.
Groceries: $173.28/300. Two main things happened here: 1.) We went to Target and bought a ton of ‘junk’ food (Kit Kats, chips, Cheezits, ice cream come to mind) and 2.) I placed a really large order from our local farm co-op for a ton of veggies. This will last quite a while. I got kale, poblano peppers, shisito peppers, heirloom apples, broccoli, beets, romano beans, eggplant, potatoes, sage. I also picked up some sausage and chicken and some chocolate milk as a surprise for my husband. (I always like to see what people eat so that’s why I include all this.)
Retirement: $0/500.00. I still haven’t moved on this. I really thought the stock market was going to go down. At this point, I am getting a freelance check today that I am pulling the last $200 from, so I will just dump all $500 in this week and call it a day.
It’s going well! I’m all caught up with tracking in Buckets, it still isn’t quite working for me. Found a free version of the Tiller spreadsheet on their website, I think I’m going to try that in parallel. I also started back up with Duolingo thanks to everyone here. Feel free to add me - I’m Rhubarbsoda on there too.
Update:
Rent - $808/$808
CC payment - $275/$275
Renters Insurance - $0/$29
Life Insurance - $0/$23
Apartment Utilities - $0/$17
Groceries - $154.57/$300
Donations - $0/$100
Subscriptions - $20.38/$72 - Spotify/Hulu
Etc - $1.07/$50
Laundry - $0/$40
Gifts - $0/$40
Restaurants - $0/$30
Alcohol -$0/$20
Snacks - $0/$20
Pets - $286/$300
Car - $0/$300
Medical - $0/$100
Retirement $150/$150
E-fund $400/$400 And with that I’ve saved 20% of my pretax income for the year!!!
Also spent $6 to renew the station’s DMCA agent registration - but will be reimbursed, so doesn’t count budget-wise.
Doing okay. Knowing I’d be reporting definitely helped keep grocery spending in check.
Groceries: $224/800
Baby: $551/600
(I’m going to count directly related income, like selling clothes & sports gear that I’ve replaced due to pregnancy size, to this category. But not other random household stuff that was sold.)
I’m out. I spent so. many. hours. the first few days of the month working on digital organizing and cleaning out drives (which is unfortunately still continuing) that I never managed to even create a time budget for anything else.
I did this! It was a long time in the car ( 2.5 hrs each way) to spend a couple hours hanging out in a small back yard, but it was really nice to see people in person.
My discretionary spending amount looks low to me now, but its fine, I am spending this weekend doing the rest of the house related projects I want to try and get done before the contractor installs the floors ( which he just pushed back another 4 days. I really hope it happens then). So, other than groceries I am not planning any spending over the weekend, unless its warm enough to walk and get ice cream. I might not be able to resist that one more time
I’m interested to see where we shake out this month! I don’t want my numbers to make anyone think they need to reduce theirs though…
