I’m in! I want to do a food budget challenge of $100 for groceries and $100 for eating out. The exception, if needed, is for mr krmit’s birthday cake/any birthday meal requests.
I’ll be in tech in the middle of the month, which means long hours and many opportunities to buy snacks, so it will be a good challenge!
I finally caught up on things.
Goals:
$800 or less for groceries (take-out will be mayhem)
Less than $500 on random baby supplies 
Okay. I’m in. I will try and only spend $100 on groceries in October. My pantry is pretty full, my freezer ditto. I will exclude bulk buys however. Sometimes, based on when a farm’s produce is ready, it happens in October. I still am waiting for our winter carrots, onions and potatoes, which may happen in one slug, or two… and sometimes that all happens in Sept, but every now and then it’s in October. So…
$100 should cover coffee, milk, butter, cheese, ice cream, and eggs, almost the only things I should need to buy. Also, I will exclude Halloween candy as we don’t keep candy in the house otherwise.
We usually bake fall - early summer and I should have enough flour for baking.
OK, my Budgetober goal is to stay within my budgeted categories for my fun money. That means checking the budget before I buy something! This means you, Clare!
I want to be in! I need to think about what to track.
Okay, so I went back 8 months and pulled together all my expenses. I discovered interesting averages and spending habits. What usually gets me in trouble is spontaneous spending. I am going to have to keep a careful track of that in October. I’m setting up an October budget this weekend.
I want to write up a budget for the whole of October and see if we can stick to it - totally willing to delay things to November just to meet an arbitrary goal. Planning my spending for October will be fun!
In rejigging my personal budget I became aware of highly irregular income, which is why I keep starting and stopping budgeting. It’s frustrating. When I figured out the average income from all my personal sources this week, it worked out to ~$500 CAD per month! I am in shock! This is basically money for clothing/hair, gifts, charity, hobbies, education, my art studio business, and miscellaneous personal stuff. It seems like a lot to me. But I have 5-6 income streams at last count. Every little bit adds up!
I use a modified cash/digital envelope system for tracking my money. It’s a mix of fake money and real money. Fake money represents the money in my bank accounts. That is usually for my Sinking Funds, or once a year expenses (or longer). Real money is usually my Discretionary Spending. Living Expenses come from our joint bank accounts. My Business Expenses come from my personal money.
However, I’ve been getting slack lately. I’ve been keeping more cash in my envelopes than necessary. I like the idea of using debit and credit cards because I like the added slip of paper that shows transactions. But I know using a card is a slippery slope for me. So…I’m going through all my envelopes and reassessing whether I need the amount in cash or in the bank.
I drew up a budget with the minimum amount I could possibly “earn” in October. But I am undecided whether to take September’s income to use as October’s budget amount, or to just stash the extra income from September into savings challenges at the end of the month. I guess I could do either? How have you budgeted with irregular income?
I think my goal this year is to spend money. I really need to upgrade my wardrobe and buy comfortable clothes that fit me and make me feel pretty for the upcoming season. Will come up with an allowance.
Alright, I have a goal: Stick to $50 budget for dining out. This has been a significant problem for me for several years, sometimes more manageable, most times not.
Exceptions:
Looking forward to encouraging you to buy yourself nice things!
Are there ways we can help support you with this besides in the budget check in way? Would recipes or what to eat brainstorming be helpful/wanted?
That might be helpful! I do have some limitations that make things tricky.
My Budgetober goals are:
I made a table of “What can I buy in a ‘no buy’ month”, and this is the list of categories I came up with based on what I like to buy, haha. There are a lot of spontaneous things, for sure.
ETA: The answer to the crafting supplies question is always “yes, I do have multiple unfinished crafts already”, by the way.
I’m gonna do this ! I need to make my categories still
Thank-you for posting your chart. It helps me tremendously to see other people’s thought processes laid out like this. I am trying to curb spontaneous spending as well.
I am also in! I will be focusing on groceries, dining, “shopping” which is a catch all for everything not purchased at the grocery store (mostly Amazon) that is not a gift, and kids activities. Kids activities has really jumped this year due to kiddo wanting to do all the things and me wanting to give him all of the experiences, so I need to see where we realistically are. September was really high due to the start of the school year, and that number cannot be the monthly average, but I don’t think it is.
Groceries: $800
Dining/Takeout: $450
Shopping: $300
Kids activities: $300
I decided! I will track groceries. My goal will be to spend less than I spent this month (360$).
First cheques hit the bank last night. Paid myself the allotted amount for my personal spending, and divvied it up between my envelopes. I had some leftover, so put it into savings challenges. So far, so good.
GOAL = to not pilfer from one envelope to cover overspending in another.
I will, however, allow myself to take from the savings challenges to cover expenses over and above what’s in the related envelope.
I’m in!
I’m going to try to stay under $600 for all food expenses (groceries, restaurants, and coffee/bakery) and stay under $200 for hobby spending.
