I made it through the month without pilfering from one category envelope to cover another category envelope!
Today was payday, so I’m calling Budgetober quits for this year.
We did seriously look at our entire budget this month. We will continue to work with it more frequently, as our income and expenses seem highly variable month-to-month.
We did increase our personal allowances. If things work out income wise, we’ll consider another raise in the new year.
Final check in! Really proud of myself this month, I managed to save past my goal for my upcoming trip. I shifted some of my food categories around and spent less in dining out and delivery than in past months, and kept grocery about the same so I am happy with that. My excess fun budget will probably roll over to next month or be sent to savings for the trip. I’m sitting at about a 35% savings rate, down from my 45% last week since I got another paycheck, but I will have a bit more to save/invest once the bills get paid on the first. On to November!
Great way to close out the month - I cancelled 2 subscription boxes! I’ve been on the fence for a while now, and after Tuesday’s live stream I was inspired to re-consider what the function of these boxes are in my present life. They weren’t very expensive, but a good portion of the contents are being stashed for future unplanned projects. I realized the novelty of a surprise isn’t suited for my life at the moment. Thanks @anomalily for a great challenge this month!
Strong finish on the groceries as the larder was pretty much restocked and we’re still under the £1500 goal.
Year on year is up considerably.
Item
2023
2024
Broadband
£40.00
£40.00
Electric
£220.00
£302.00
Council tax
£241.00
£238.00
Mobile phones x 2
£20.00
£20.00
Property insurance inc public liability
£80.00
£85.00
Netflix
£11.00
£11.00
Kindle unlimited
£9.50
£9.50
Groceries
£410.00
£519.00
Takeaway
£20.00
£29.00
£1,051.50
£1,253.50
The increase in electric is partially related to the fact is because we’ve chosen to increase the monthly amount to help average out the year and build a bit of credit for the winter. The actual unit price is currently slightly lower than last year.
I think groceries have increased overall but this was an unusually high month due to some restocking and some good sales.
Some of the discussions on here about tracking made me wonder if we should do more. However the banking system in this country means we pretty much only use our debit cards (which are very secure), no cash, no cheques and very occasionally a credit card for higher value transactions. We have transaction alerts set up and partner jokes that it’s very handy as it gives him a 10 minute warning to get the gate open when he sees I’ve paid in the supermarket!
Money transfers for paying friends, tradesmen etc are just done between bank accounts and normally take a couple of minutes to show up. The latest fraud prevention measure means that if I set up a new payee it will also check the name on the account details I’ve input. Helps avoid fraud but also stupid typos.
So almost everything is already in one place, however while thinking about tracking and looking at the app for our main account I’ve discovered ‘Insights’ which categorises transactions. It’s not perfect and doesn’t allow exports of the data yet but it’s a good attempt and I think I might start adding some custom tags and see if I can make it more useful.
I wanted to finish out the month before doing my week 4 check-in.
Category
Goal
Week 4 / Monthly Total
Cleaning Lady
$0
$300
Rec Center
$50
$0
Charitable Giving
$100
$86
Life Insurance
$80
$132
Subscriptions
$80
$37
Student Loan
$535
$0
Mortgage
$2,653
$2,653
Electric / Gas
$175
$123
Internet
$55
$55
Preschool
$1,000
$1,000
Costco ann fee
$120
$130
Home Improvement
$0
$128
New Technology
$0
26
Enrichment
$150
$162
Judo
0
100
Medical
$300
$588
Gifts/Holidays
$0
$74
Christmas Spending
$0
$159
Cell Phone
$60
$36
Service and Parts
$200
$1,257
DH Fun Money
$25
$83
E Fun Money
$25
$37
Coffee Shops
$50
$25
Household Items
$50
$156
Date Night
$100
$0
Clothing
$50
$65
Books
$30
$0
Toiletries
$30
$18
Hair/Massage
$50
$0
Baby Sitter
$0
$30
Kid Supplies
$100
$29
Uber
$50
$7
Gas
$75
$81
Groceries
$800
$559
Dining Out
$250
$252
Total Spending
$7,243
$8,388
On the surface, we failed to meet the goal of $7,000. However, I do think it was a win overall. First, I forgot about preschool tuition when I set the goal of $7,000. Second, I knew that we needed an oil change and whatever else was ready to be serviced on the car, so I allocated $200 for that appointment. That appointment ended up being $174, which was a really good estimate on my part. What I was not planning on was replacing all 4 tires on my car, but at the appointment they informed me that my tires were bald and it was time to replace them. I got an estimate from them and then went to Costco and it was $400 cheaper to buy them from Costco, so I bought them there. The tires were $1082 that I wasn’t planning on spending this month.
What this situation taught me is that my system works. Our goal is to live our day to day life off less than my salary, and then my husband’s SSDI can be set aside for more savings and sinking funds for future savings. I know that for anyone else in my family, a bill for over a thousand dollars would be met with extreme stress, freaking out, and absolutely no way to pay it, even utilizing credit. But in my case the “car service/repair” sinking fund had $2197 sitting in it. I just put it on my Costco card to get 4% back and I’ll pay it off immediately.
Even with the preschool tuition that I forgot about and the unexpected tire purchase, we were still able to cash-flow the spending this month so we didn’t truly need to dip into the sinking funds. Total spending was $8388 and total income was $9866.
ETA - I just noticed that total food spending is actually the lowest it has been all year. $811 for all groceries + restaurants for a family of 4 and two of us have celiac so lots of expensive GF substitutes for things!
Overall this was a good month, since I was thinking so much more about my spending in these categories.
I made the kids pay for all of the “extra” things they wanted this month - stuffed animals, Halloween accessories that didn’t go with their costumes, candy
I didn’t buy pretty dishes or Halloween decorations just because I liked them
I didn’t buy myself any extra clothes this month
Failures:
I did buy myself a tattoo, and that DEFINITELY put me over on spontaneous this month.
We overspent on groceries, but only by like $20! That’s really good, honestly.
I bought the kids 2 books and How to Train Your Dragon 3 (from the $5 bin at Walmart )
My biggest failure - I went to buy a single skein of yarn to finish the mittens I’ve been working on forever but ended up with three more for a new project They were on sale, and it wasn’t expensive, but still. I said I wouldn’t and then there was some beautiful soft yarn and I want to make myself a sweater. Someday. After I finish these mittens, haha.
So, overall, a better month than last month, but a failure according to my original goals. I didn’t magically recast my budget for tattoos and yarn, haha.
Takeaways: my food storage is pretty good, I only ran out of pasta - still plenty of baking supplies, beans, rice, boring pantry staples. I still have garden tomatoes ripening on my counter! $100 basically kept us in dairy and eggs with a VERY MINIMAL extra buffer for added ingredients (this month that was tofu, cabbage, rolls, supplies for birthday cake, and those dang caraway seeds).
I knew going in it would be a very lean challenge, but it was lean to the point of no longer fun. Groceries/cooking/meal planning, it turns out, is a big source of creativity for me and not having the option of even considering trying out a new recipe because I didn’t have the ingredients was kind of a bummer. This last week in particular I was SO OVER IT.
Week 4 & 5 Check-in!
Combining because I’m lousy at checking in
I am going to use my magic wand: I had an unexpected lunch with a close friend last week that I will not be counting (a la my exemption for Vegan except this was not Vegan) totalling $34.37.
I do also expect to spend close to the remaining amount of $8.56 today, the last day, because I’m out and about and didn’t have time to pack a lunch today.
Returned a pair of jeans and turtleneck today so that the line item for clothing is reflecting actual overage and not the additional fluff of stuff that will come off the balance sheet.
It’s pure window dressing i know. But it also tipped the balance on that turtleneck that i was undecided on
Credit card: once things clear I should be at $170.83. Again waiting on reimbursements and transfers. And had to spend another $500 on things I’m getting reimbursed for. I think I’m going to break out a currently unused credit card to use on stuff that is getting reimbursed so I can keep things more separate and track more easily.
Indulgences: $7.75 on a fancy drink that was also part of a costume, lol
Fitness: does having to purchase a new bike tube count? If so, 10.80
Conclusion, my fitness spending is unquestionably high and if I’m going to keep doing my that I need to tighten up a bit in other things.
I didn’t elect to track food/groceries until today but apart from a few snacks and one meal out my partner really didn’t contribute to food this month so that was a higher spend than usual. Lesson learned is it probably would have been helpful to track that category.
If I am going to return to any kind of regular tracking to make it not a headache I need to use a separate credit card for shit that gets reimbursed.
An equal reality: I spent $800 on “unexpected” rent and and $500 on an “unplanned” bed, and saved $180.
Which one is true? Fuck if I know. The rent and bed were planned for Nov, but cleared the credit card on 30-Oct. Low spending in Oct allowed me to cashflow it this month, instead of next month. Net savings…
This was actually a really good month for us. Some things I spent more on than I thought and some things less, but considering that we had this gigantic cost for the cat and also bought some plane tickets, I’m kind of astonished that it was a regular-to-low spend month. We did do pretty well on groceries (which for us is not just good but “things you buy at the grocery store.”
I don’t use sinking funds so for us it will always be a game of trying to guess the spending and I always try to pad a few categories but also I inevitably forget somethings that I am planning to buy that month (this month, for instance, skin care and the boys’ new snow boots and ski pants).
The goal was $7K and we were just over $6700. Woo hoo!
Held strong with the eating out rule and landed at $56.88 spent this week (I’ve resolved to not eat out the rest of this week even if the month is rolling over into the new budget). This makes me feel a lot better about being intentional with this, and maybe even trying to lower it to $50 per week moving forward.
I did end up spending more on groceries than expected overall this month, having to recast my budget for that category. This is another area of focus moving forward for me.
As always, this challenge is a really helpful (and fun!) way to look at my budget more critically. This is super handy energy moving forward because starting a new job, I know I’ll need to rewrite my budget.
I spent $38.09 out of my $40 budget on snacks. As usual it was nice to disrupt things and show myself that I can indeed survive my commute without treating myself haha
As stated in my last check-in… things went sideways about a week ago and we spent 5 days out of state helping out and dealing with an unexpected and sudden death in Partner’s family. That meant no grocery shopping. But yes to things like expensive airport food. Ended up being a fairly cheap trip simply because a lot of things (meals and hotel) were subsidized by the Navy. We got back in last night, late, and today is the end of October. So. Uh.
I guess that puts my final at an approximate $300 spent and $30 remaining in GROCERIES budget.
Overall I would say I’m really happy with how this turned out. It was a really nice match up with my own gentle re-entry into meal planning and cooking. I plan on keeping up the meal planning part, if not the careful budgeting part.
For us, $330 for approx. 1.5 adults worth of eating (Partner is the half count. She gets a lot of her eating done out of the home) was ‘okay be intelligent about this’ but not outside of what was do-able. Though it didn’t get a FULL test out since we left town last Friday.
Well, I didn’t need to wave my wand after all, lol. I corrected my math and my total spend for October was $2956.79, about $40 under my original budget.
I’d like to continue tracking my daily spending for November. I’m doing okay because I’m flush with cash this time of year, but December and January will be more lean. I want to see if I preemptively bring down my takeout budget before the winter.
Less good adherence to checking the budget as the end of month drew closer. Knew I had gone over in my “problem” categories and didn’t want to face the music. But still good practice/observing myself to make better decisions in the future. Happy to have this reset.
Final update, as I set myself one last task for the very end of the month:
The task was adding my bank account/s to Pocketsmith. Then realised I couldn’t because of course I needed to subscribe to the app, so decided to plump for it, and test it out for a month. But it took ages to pay properly. Lots of confusing errors and issues. Hmmm.
Finally got it done, and then discovered I still couldn’t add my bank account because the app needed a password rather than using a link on the backend, and my bank uses a partial password system. This is all on the browser, because with Pocketsmith, although there is a mobile app, you can’t actually add accounts in the mobile app.
So, I’ve got to admit, not the best or easiest first impression. Hmph.
)
They were on sale, and it wasn’t expensive, but still. I said I wouldn’t and then there was some beautiful soft yarn and I want to make myself a sweater. Someday. After I finish these mittens, haha.
