Budgetober Challenge! October 1 - 31 🧙🏼💸🎃

Challenges
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OKAY! I signed up last year & then events precluded much engagement. I was supposed to drop in last night after the stream but a cat precluded much engagement. So now I’m back!

Last year I’d been dealing with a huge income change & the demise of Mint, so the hope was to retool my tracking - I have had the same habits for so long I don’t worry about falling off the wagon, but I ended up with a really weird year of lumpy unusual expenses. Since things are settling out now I would like to commit just to building out my new tracking system & cheering others on.

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Welp, my leave got canceled, Thanks Obama Helene. I won’t be attending the wedding, which much of the allotted $500 was earmarked for. I guess I’ll be spending less!

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You’ll fit in great around here

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Ugh that’s such a bummer, I’m sorry. Thanks for helping with recovery though!

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Joining once again this year (and decorating my budget tracker with last year’s stickers!). I’m starting a new job mid-month so I’m anticipating I’ll need to redo my budget in November after a month of rebalancing. But for now the focus is on eating out & additional random costs I haven’t done a great job of tracking in the past. My goal for this month is…

  • Spending no more than $60 on eating out per week (including coffee & other treats). Ideally I’d like to get less than $50/week, but I already have some social activities planned that will make this tough as-is.
  • Spending less than $50 on stationary/sticker supplies for the whole month (cries)
  • Making note of extra unexpected costs and make categories for them moving forward.

Wishing everyone the best this spooky season! I love the autumnal weather, and snuggling in with a cup of pumpkin chai & a good book!

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Boo on cancelled leave, even if it’s for a very excellent and important reason.

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I’m going to be using Rocketmoney to track my budget and I’m going to focus on groceries and other for Budgetober!

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Hello! I’ve been around the forums for a while, mostly lurking. My goal for Budget over will be to spend under $2.7k for the month (excluding giving). I average $3300 each month, but I spent a lot last month because of an anniversary so I want to spend less to get back on track in the last quarter of saving for the year.

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I did NOT buy myself more fall/Halloween decor or a Halloween shirt from ShirtWoot this week, despite the existence of this design (no I’m not into actual scary things, just cutely spooky-adjacent things)

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Absolute same!

  • person who wore a pusheen witch outfit to work yesterday
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Checking in this Friyay:

Groceries: $0/$800
Baby: $47.27/$500 (swaddles, colostrum syringes, small pack of diapers)

I may be running on easy mode in that we did both a regularly scheduled grocery shop and a “buy what’s left on the registry before we hit 37 weeks” before October – but that just means I’m more determined to NOT go over these numbers, which may be especially challenging for our grocery spend.

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So I am posting the budget I’m dealing with at the moment for my personal stuff. I’ve put built up amounts from previous months in brackets after this month’s budget.

October budget
$0.00 Business - website (has $210 total - fully funded)
$0.00 Business - Ko-fi (has $110 total - fully funded)
$0.00 Business - domain (has $25 total - fully funded)
$20 Business - office supplies & tech (has $135.25 total)
$22 Education (has $147 total)
$40 Rug Hooking - Tools & Materials (has $120 total)
$0.00 Sewing (has $125 total - fully funded)
$0.00 Art Supplies (has $95 total)
$0.00 Nature Journalling (has $50 total)
$0.00 Other hobbies (has $55 total)
$0.00 Planners (already purchased for 2025)
$0.00 Birthdays (will pick up saving for these in January)
$20 Miscellaneous (has $27.70 total)
$12 Amazon Prime (I’ll keep this until after Christmas and then drop it)
$95 Christmas (has $295 total)
$0.00 Clothing (has $138.65 total)
$0.00 Hair (has $140 total - fully funded)
$25 Charity (has $245 total)

$234.00 TOTAL Budget for personal for October

My goal is not “rob Peter to pay Paul”. In other words, no pulling cash from one envelope to cover another category.

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My MIL gave us gift certificates for a local food shop which I have been low key hoarding. This weekend they had a sale, so we went and spent $25. 125 to go!

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Checkin in #1

I’ve been grocery shopping twice, and have done one successful run of meal planning and hopefully have set myself up for round two. I spent a fair bit, but also stocked up on some things, like another 10 lbs of rice and noodles, and some sauces/condiments for the style of cooking I’m doing right now, which I’m hoping means the following weeks will have lower costs.

October 1st:

  • Big grocery store: $21.01
  • Asian grocery store: $41.78

October 4th:

  • Aldi: $31.46
  • Asian grocery store: $50.07

Total spent so far: $144

Remaining budget: $186

It is October 4th. :rofl: Deeply hoping the assumption that it will be cheaper from here on out ends up being correct. Because PER DAY average so far is hilariously bad. BUT I just shopped today for the next round of food prep.

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Check in 1!

I have not done any clothing shopping! I bought some underwear that, when it arrived, looked nothing like the image online, so I returned that. This weekend I plan to do some Pinterest pinning. I need some inspo for my body type. I want to create 4 outfit archetypes to guide purchases

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Oops i forgot to post my budget at the start of the month. I will be tracking food expenses and trying to stick to less than $100/week for groceries and take away together. We have to eat down some of the pantry, which will need to be menu planned (we’ve fallen off the menu-planning horse in the last year.)

Week 1 check-in:
At $68 so far with a few things needing stocking up still. Used a few gift cards that were expiring soon to grab some things whic helped lower it.

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My goal is to stick to my hobby budget and input daily purchases into my budget spreadsheets. Thanks for hosting this!

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Ok, I made two spreadsheets and downloaded September personal spending/income and business to date spending/income. Will still need to reconcile those, and I think there’s some spending not accounted that I need to add in. But I started!

Not sure what else I’ll have time for in the coming week, but I’ll make time to make some progress. Work is currently overwhelming but I’m prioritizing doing something fun on the weekends even though it makes me further behind.

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Check-in #1 - no spending from personal money this past week. However unexpected income of $7.66 for royalties and interest. Tiny, but still welcome.

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Week 1 $22.45 $2.55 UNDER budget
Cheap market 10/2: Block cheddar, ice cream, mushrooms, avocado $19.46
Cheap market 10/3: Mozzarella $2.99

Other food, from farmstand: lettuce, escarole, tomatoes, mini winter squash, onions, garlic,herbs, broccoli, bok choi, eggplant. (previously purchased) The farmstand share was approx. $42/week. I bought a 1/2 share this fall, 4 visits. I’ll likely buy produce from the farm for the weeks between share pickups. Their produce is 1/2 off Tue - Weds. Shares are put out Weds.

Solution! No juice in the house for hubby? We do have apples left from my apple picking 2 weeks ago… gohd knows they need to be used.

Retrieved the food processor from the attic with the juicer attachment. Now? We have 1/2 gallon of fresh apple juice. The two baskets of apples waiting to be dealt with is now down to the end of one. No extra $ spent… pantry reduced…equipment/previous $ spent used…yummy apple juice made.

Total win! :apple:

Week 2
10/6 Cheap market: instant milk, milk $7.78 realized they hadn’t charged me for the chutney when I got home. I will need to give them $4.49 at some point! $7.78+4.49 = $12.27

10/6 Other market: cheese $5.49
10/7 Neighbor’s farm $2 for 6 eggs

Spent so far week 2: $19.76 ($5.24 available)

10/8 International market $3.99 drink mix
10/8 Farm stand $2 tomatoes

5.24-5.99 = .75 OVER

Hmmm. We’re out of coffee or will be tomorrow and DH is out of cider. He vetoed using the remaining apples for more juice because it’s a huge PITA to set up/tear down/clean and for just a cup or 2 isn’t worth it. So, I bought cider and coffee beans tonight. He informed me the beans will last a week, almost exactly. The cider, ditto.

On sale, $3 off, the two items were $12.98 . [✓] I’ll have to look it up. :crying_cat_face: $13.73 over.

Last year, cider was significantly cheaper than OJ. I"ll have to look at the prices and check to see if that’s still true. Also need to check the cheap market for the price of cider. The 2 items were bought at a high end version of our expensive market. We avoided the small town store and green market, both more expensive yet. It’s a chi-chi "villiage:!

Lesson Learned: IF I WANT TO DO A ROCK BOTTOM BUDGET I NEED TO BE WAAY MORE ORGANIZED THAN I’VE BEEN IN THE PAST! Not just by doing menu planning, but doing long-term pantry planning too!

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