We are working on our kitten budget and I’m just about finished. I’m excited that I can save up more than I thought I could for emergencies! I’m curious about a couple of categories, what do you consider household goods and how do you budget for it. Also do you always budget for furniture or only when you are expecting to buy some?
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Okay, so I was doing good until I bought a sticker advent calendar. I have no regrets, but am like “dude. you have so. many. stickers.” So I think I am going to challenge myself to refrain from buying any the first half of 2025. Who knows, maybe if things go well, I’ll make it the whole year. I am giving myself a tiny exception because all or nothing has not gone well in the past- the coffee monsterz co new releases (every other month or so, I’m not a collector, I just get what I like) and whimsy mail (a $22 subscription). We’ll see, aim high and see what happens. Let’s see how week three goes.
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Slightly late week 2 checkin, but ~11 in grocery (will have to check the conversion, but needed another sunscreen, hair ties, and somehow the hotel only has shampoo and no conditioner which doesn’t work well when it’s salt water and hair close to waist-length). Also 11 in hobbies, although that’ll go up tomorrow for a night dive, and the airline voucher arrived as I was leaving so no tickets booked yet but progress has been made.
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Household goods:
Anything that is used in a bathroom like soap, toothpaste etc. Except shampoo and anything hair related, I have a separate category for that
Anything used in the kitchen but inedible and “consumable” like paper towels, dishsoap, cleaning products
For the furniture, I budget for these when I know I will need to buy some.
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Household goods for me includes cleaning supplies, dishwasher and laundry detergent, soap, and things like deodorant/toothpaste. Does not include shampoo/conditioner because I get expensive stuff.
I only budget for furniture when I know I am going to need to buy it in the next few months
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Blearily (& belatedly) checking in for week 2 after my first day at my new job. Man I’m exhausted-- learning new stuff is hard!
However, I’m doing pretty well on my goals for this month so far. For this week I’m clocking in at $38.34 for eating out and $52.71 for groceries, putting me at $153/$300 for groceries for the month. I may end up having to recast my grocery situation unless I can make the next few weeks a little leaner, but I’m doing better on my eating out resolution than expected, which was the one I thought would be harder.
That said, my impulse to stress eat in the next couple weeks because of starting a new job (especially since I’m now working downtown close to a lot of food carts & restaurants) is strong, so we’ll see how I hold up.
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Another week with a high grocery spend, this time because getting a large order of discount lamb. It’s delivered from a local island farm who are experiementing with regenerative farming practices and their meat is excellent but expensive. I like to support them all year round but when they offer end of cycle discounts I definitely stock up.
| Item | Cost | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Broadband | £40.00 | Monthly |
| Electric | £302.00 | Monthly |
| Council tax | £238.00 | Monthly |
| Mobile phones x 2 | £20.00 | Monthly |
| Property insurance inc public liability | £85.00 | Monthly |
| Netflix | £11.00 | Monthly |
| Kindle unlimited | £9.50 | Monthly |
| Groceries | £179.00 | Week 1 |
| Takeaway | £29.00 | Week 1 |
| Groceries | £135.00 | Week 2 |
Running total : £1048.50
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Hang in there @natwren ! You can do it! Home cooked food can be healthier, and, depending on your recipes, can be relaxing time cooking too. I love to get creative in the kitchen. Recipes are really only a guideline. 
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Week 2 check in! I’m still hoping we can stay under $7K but I did realize I forgot about some big items: we need the lawn aerated and I forgot that October is when I outfit the kids for winter. And BOTH my big kids need boots. Cuckoo is all set thanks to @Economista and the items I bought at 50% off at the end of last winter. BB needs snow pants but needs a hard-to-find men’s small and LB needed a coat, but we grabbed that at Costco for $35.
| October | Planned | Week 1 | Week 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home maintenance and repairs | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mortgage | 2079 | 2079 | 2079 |
| Home supplies and furnishings | 100 | 26 | 46 |
| Groceries | 1200 | 164 | 512 |
| Restaurants | 200 | -22 | 31 |
| General kid spending | 300 | 26 | 219 |
| Subscriptions | 100 | 26 | 70 |
| Misc. bills and services | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Utilities | 350 | 0 | 97 |
| Health | 297 | 304 | 304 |
| Cash | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Gifts and holiday | 150 | 0 | 157.41 |
| Shopping | 100 | 0 | 0 |
| Cat | 0 | 231 | 231 |
| Donations | 20 | 0 | 0 |
| Travel | 1000 | 356 | 356 |
| Out and misc. entertainment | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| Car payment | 452 | 0 | 0 |
| Auto maintenance | 20 | 0 | 0 |
| Taxes/insurance | 158 | 157 | 157 |
| Gas | 60 | 0 | 0 |
| Parking, transit, etc. | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| His clothes | 100 | 0 | 0 |
| His misc. spending | 100 | 0 | 0 |
| My clothes | 50 | 0 | 53 |
| My misc. spending | 50 | 13 | 18 |
| 6936 | 3360 | 4331.41 |
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Not sure if this is a Tiny Victory, or a Budgetober item, but I just swerved away from a frivolous spend. Yes it was reduced. And it then had a further Amazon coupon reduction. No, I didn’t need it.
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Why not both?
Also congrats!!!
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Week 2 checkin: 
-Trying to learn more about money management. Started listening to a podcast where two people talk about their money journeys and various money topics. Podcast is upbeat and not intimidating. My main goal is to face my money fears so podcasting has been a good entry point for me (and this forum!)
-Not much of an update on the budgeting itself—I am in a rough spot as I continue to look for jobs so I don’t have anything to spend except on rent and food.
-That said, I am researching high protein foods/meals that are cheap and satisfying—so if anyone has any favorites i’m open to hearing them 
Good job everybody!!
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Week 2 check in: proud of myself for tracking (both on paper and on my app this week) and stayed within my category goals even though I had a weekend trip. I also started talking more about personal finance stuff with my friends and mom, which wasn’t actually a goal of mine for budgetober – but I knew I would feel less shame if I did, and annoyed to report that was indeed the case 
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Oops, miscalculated week one, new total was $111.25.
Week 2 check in: spent $37.50. This was just eating out (ice cream and coffee and cake) with no groceries as i stocked up the week before but forgot to count some of it.
Week 3 will definitely go over the planned budget but there’s some wiggle room now 
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I have spent. $28 on coffee last week and none this week (it’s fall break so I basically haven’t left the house except for brisk walks).
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Week 3! I’ve already somehow spent over $300 on eating out this month. I’m using my magic wand to update my savings goal to $400 this month from $500 (if I’m able to do the fully $500 I will throw $100 at debt) and my eating out spending to $500 to account for my birthday trip this weekend. I’ve been doing well eating at home for the most part but the meals out have been spendy.
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Week 2 check in -
Still doing well! Home supplies, spontaneous, and kid spending (on non-essential things) is all well within budget. Maybe that’s what happens when I don’t impulse buy small cute things when I’m in stores, ha.
Groceries might be tight, surprisingly. We’re at $500 of $800 for the month, and I need to look over our orders to see what I’m doing that’s driving it up.
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I know I just signed up but I’m going to do a check in because I made a call to spend $60 on books this week instead of other coping mechanisms that would be less long-term beneficial. Things have been really hard so I’m trying to factor in some extra pleasure.
So I have maxed my frivolous/Christmas gift shopping budget category at $375 (which includes the books and almost all my Christmas shopping that isn’t gift cards and donations as well as a few Halloween purchases). Gotta make sure I don’t slip up and buy anything cute/spooky until November, but a friend gave me a gift subscription to this super cute, witchy box that will arrive next week and I think that will satisfy the urge. Though since it is Spooky season I may recast if I find some amazing costume piece or decor that I’d use year-round but won’t be available after October 31.
Also doing more takeout than usual because of the Hard Things so my other categories look like this:
Comfort food: $74/$150 (right on track)
Eating out with others: $180/266 (gotta watch this, I’m way past halfway!)
And I’m still on track to save an extra $400 this month, but I might recast that to increase my Halloween spend allowance and my community support giving that I’m feeling called to increase this month.
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I have a book called, “What Do We Eat Now?” which was written just after the US got into WWII and rationing started. There is a chapter “Substantial Dishes with Little or No Meat.” The only dish I’ve made from it is a bean/apple casserole, which my notes say, “needs onion, garlic, more salt…” The recipe specifies Navy beans, but I used baby limas once and rice beans the second time.
2C dried Navy beans, 1/2C molasses, 1 1/2t salt, 1/2lb salt pork (I’ve always used bacon and a lot less than 1/2 a lb!) 3C apples, cored & sliced.
Wash beans and soak over night. The next morning, heat to boiling and cook, covered, til tender, about. 1 hour. Drain, saving water. Arrange beans and apple slices in alternate layers in a greased casserole. Drizzle with molasses on each layer. Put salt pork bits on top. Bake, covered, 325 for about 1.5 hour. If the beans become dry in cooking, add some of the reserved cooking water.
I have a toaster oven I’ve used instead of a big oven for this. Next time I make it I’ll probably do the first cooking in the instant pot. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll get it to work, but now that I know we like it, that’s great. You could possibly get something similar by adding apple sauce to some canned, rinsed beans perhaps?
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Do you like tofu? I’ve been cooking more with it this month and digging it. Tofu plus mushrooms in something is pretty decent on the protein! idk what “high protein” means to you tho. 
I’ve been using plain tofu in my dumplings (with mushrooms and a veg + seasoning) and pre-seasoned tofu plus eggs in my fried rice. The pre-seasoned isn’t quite as cheap, but it’s basically read-to-eat right out of the package which is nice. The kind I have this week is pre marinated in soy sauce and other flavors.
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