I have not spent any fun money this month except a planned subscription charge. Having Budgetober in mind helped me resist a yarn purchase!
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Check-in 1
My Budgetober goal is to target my clothing budget specifically for October, I have been spending WAY TOO MUCH on clothing and then somehow still not loving how I’m dressed most of the time. I’m attempting to purchase no clothing items outside of my Nuuly subscription (the $108 line item here). I know $108 a month seems like so much to spend on clothes to most people, but I figure the fact that this amount would be huge progress for me is proof that this is super important to a dress address.
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Week 1:
Grocery spend: $0
Eating out spend: $0
I picked up a few essentials the last week of september, so not surprised I didn’t need to buy anything else. I did decide on mr krmit’s birthday cake recipe this week!
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Check in #1
Income (post tax) so far is $1996 (main job paycheck #1, birthday $ from parents, pet sitting paycheck #1, and pay from an off-books pet sitting job). Expecting maybe like $1500 more this month but the pet sitting landscape can sometimes change quickly.
Credit card — put $500 toward it after most recent paycheck. Forgot I should try to spend on my debit card this month to make things easier to track. Current balance there is $515.99. Will likely pay a bit more after the weekend when I see where things even put in my checking account.
Indulgences — $102.94 spent in this category so far, on Halloween costume stuff, a haircut, and some small gifts for my partner for our dating anniversary. Having a bit of a struggle deciding what goes in this category. Counting the gifts because they were not planned. Counting the haircut because even though most people would say I definitely needed a haircut, it was more of a whim than a planned expense. I’m not counting the meals I am purchasing on the small road trip we’re on this weekend, but I will count the treats when we stop at a vegan bakery on our way home tomorrow. I dunno, I’m feeling it out!
Fitness: $341.61 — this should be most for the month. Two specialty gym memberships that I use very regularly (and that most of my social life revolves around) plus $50 for a training program I had wanted to purchase for a while that went on sale — that one might fall kind of in the indulgence category? Anyway, very high for this category compared to most ppl but I’m mainly tracking to make sure I can keep on top of spending elsewhere if I am going to spend so high in this category.
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Week 1 check in. The only thing that stands out so far is that I had to take the cat back to the vet, which I didn’t budget for (I do not have sinking funds, I just handle those things as we go along) for $231.
Restaurants shows as negative because we got reimbursed for something but haven’t gotten food out yet.
I may need to shift money into gifts and holiday because I was thinking I wouldn’t be doing any Christmas shopping yet, which is true… but I might run out and buy yarn and fabric for gifts that I am making.
| October | Planned | Week 1 |
|---|---|---|
| Home maintenance and repairs | 0 | 0 |
| Mortgage | 2079 | 2079 |
| Home supplies and furnishings | 100 | 26 |
| Groceries | 1200 | 164 |
| Restaurants | 200 | -22 |
| General kid spending | 300 | 26 |
| Subscriptions | 100 | 26 |
| Misc. bills and services | 0 | 0 |
| Utilities | 350 | 0 |
| Health | 297 | 304 |
| Cash | 0 | 0 |
| Gifts and holiday | 150 | 0 |
| Shopping | 100 | 0 |
| Cat | 0 | 231 |
| Donations | 20 | 0 |
| Travel | 1000 | 356 |
| Out and misc. entertainment | 50 | 0 |
| Car payment | 452 | 0 |
| Auto maintenance | 20 | 0 |
| Taxes/insurance | 158 | 157 |
| Gas | 60 | 0 |
| Parking, transit, etc. | 0 | 0 |
| His clothes | 100 | 0 |
| His misc. spending | 100 | 0 |
| My clothes | 50 | 0 |
| My misc. spending | 50 | 13 |
| 6936 | 3360 |
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I came up with a way to trick me into postponing spending discretionary money. I created my own budget form based on my very low and very irregular income. I leave more than the average budget sheet does for income. I often have 5-10 sources of income per month.
Because I use a combination of digital (Monopoly money/hm placeholders for money already in the bank) and real cash in a cash envelope system, I added a section on the form for each category in my budget (and binders). I made columns for envelopes (categories), how much money was going into the category this month, how much of that was cash vs digital, and the total combined in that envelope.
I also track cc and cash expenses on this form. If I find myself feeling the urge to buy, I flip the form over, note the vendor, the item, the price, shipping costs, and if there’s a special deal or deadline. Then I steal myself. I have “2 Sister Bees” no spend challenge form (it’s a free download) and I see how many days I can go without spending on personal items. So far the longest I’ve gone is ten days all year! I can do better. Right now I’m at 7 days. Mostly I spend because I forget about the form, and want that dopamine rush! 
The form also has a breakdown of what’s in my various savings challenges. Plus there’s a section for bank accounts plus cash, to give me a total balance.
I’ve always been frustrated with the usual budget forms, but this one seems to be working for me so far. I’m waiting to try it a few months before I decide if it suits my purposes.
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1-Oct to 5-Oct = $154 of $500
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$101.14 at bar. For the first time in my life I forgot to pay my tab before leaving. Not sure how much is actual rounds, and how much is punishment.
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$27.86 Chipotle.
-
$25.10 Brewery
We don’t hit the pier until 15-Oct, but the internet still exists.
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I bought a paper financial planner to try out and I’ve been tracking everything I bought on my phone. I plan to fill out my planner later tonight or tomorrow, penciling-in all of my recurring expenses and what flexible spending I’ve done so far.
A bunch of bills were due this week, so I’ve already spent $862 of my $3,000 total monthly budget. The upside is that almost all of the remaining money is for flexible spending categories and entertainment subscriptions that I could pause or cancel.
I also made my annual bulk purchase of toilet paper today! Exciting!
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I am consumed with midterms but I want to say I’m participating! We’re going to track my COFFEE BUDGET this month, which I expect to balloon very large because of said midterms. I’m hoping to keep it down to $50 a week, with the ability to “roll over” the unspent cash.
Also, I’ve been doing paper budget tracking on a week by week basis! So I might post some of that here or in my journal forum.
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Ponder is managing the budget this month so, uh, that will make this trickier since I’m on his schedule. We did buy much needed new clothes for going to the gym, and our weekend trip more than I expected because we treated my family - no regrets. Will likely be able to redistribute from the holiday later this month that I overestimated for.
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Check in #1:
Uggghhhh well I will join the food bandwagon but in a different way.
- Not going crazy on take out while on vacation for 9 days - leaving tomorrow to the 12th
Used a Starbucks gift card at the airport for egg bites and London fog, $0.00
Bought dinner - $40 and we ate almost everything except a few fries. - Eating all the food that I purchase on vacation- I often over buy.
Bought road snacks we are working on- $44 - Eating down the freezer and cupboards at my mom’s until the end of the month.
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welp looks like I’m delulu already 
Food: $360.83/$800
House stuff: $1162.35/$1000
I did do big stockups of some food, so still hoping to pull that one off, but we’ll see…some “it’s been a rough couple of weeks” coffee shop visits did not help, though 
As for house stuff - our project du jour turned out to be more involved (aka expensive) than initially planned, as usual. Can someone go back in time and tell the previous owners to fix their shit?? 
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check in for this week!
155.82$/360$ on groceries
This is high, but it’s normal. With what I bought this week I will be able to cook lots of food and fill my freezer. The other weeks the groceries will be for stuff I consume daily like plant based milk and bananas, so the total should be lower. I cooked a red lentil curry today and next weekend I’ll make a soup and a white bean stew.
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check in 1
I’ve been meeting my goal of categorizing my transactions every couple days in monarch. I had stopped doing that about 6 months ago before I left on a long trip, and had never “done anything” with the data before (which was probably a factor in the tailing off of my work in categorizing/reviewing!) But already there have been some dividends in understanding where the dollars go!
What has been interesting is not so much the line items, but just how much is spent in total. Some of that - mortgage and loan repayment - is expected and unavoidable. And some is unfortunate timing (broke my glasses and had been meaning to buy reading glasses too, so ended up spending 90 bucks on repairs + some cheap readers). But a lot is…fluff…and I’ve been tagging it as such to see if I can go through it at EOM with a fine-toothed comb and decide where to cut before next month. Yesterday I was so proud of myself for couponing, but shopping a new seasons to do so was probably a false economy. So I’ll have to be a bit…brutal…in trying to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Thanks for all the encouragement so far!
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Checking in after week 1 to say things went well this week, and knowing I was going to report in definitely helped! I have been using an app to budget and track my spending. I chose not to link it to my bank so I’m entering in transactions manually, and that’s made a big difference in my awareness. Also started working through the book written by a certain head cat lady, and I found it to be the purrrrrfect motivator (sorry I had toooooooo).
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Groceries: $53/800
Dining/Takeout: $0/450
Shopping: $17/300
I’m dropping kids activities as a goal. It is just too lumpy to track as a monthly thing.
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Week 1:
Food delivery: 0/2
Weeknight dinners:
T (Oct 1): 126/200 
W (Oct 2): 208/200 
Th (Oct 3): burrito bowl Thursday <3
F (Oct 4): 109/200
Stationery: 0/500
some tvs:
- It was rainy tonight but I cut my trip into two rides instead of booking a rideshare
- Remembered to get a refill for my hand soap instead of buying a whole bottle
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Seriously I make this mistake when they send those coupons. $10 off $40 when everything is 30% more expensive isn’t actually a deal
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Week 1 Checkin ~~~
Tuesday, October 8th is the first weekly check-in. Nothing has to be perfect! Just check in by posting on this thread and mention where you’re at with your budgetober objectives.
This can be posting how much you’ve spent this week, what problems you ran into with your plan, or asking for help if you need it.
After you post your check-in, myself or another mod will get you a special-edition week 1 budgetober badge. If you still haven’t gotten your badge by Tuesday, please bat signal me (@ anomalily) and I’ll make sure you do!
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Check-in #1
So far I’ve spent $0 for dining out, so that’s a good sign for the rest of the month! I was briefly tempted by going out to get boba, but instead I’m focusing on drinking all the tea I already have (so I can buy more fun tea when I run out lol).
I spent this morning going over last month’s finances and updating everything. With the raise, I’m able to put a bit more in the monthly donation category which feels good. October looks like it’s going to be a slightly wonky month so far because of 1) new laptop purchase and 2) I still had to balance last month’s grocery expenses with my partner. Neither of those are unexpected, they’re just going to make this month look very spendy.
My apartment complex also bills water & trash two months behind, so this is the first month we’re getting those bills. Again, nothing unexpected, and the water bill is a nice amount lower than it was at our last place. I’m just mildly annoyed that everything is billed all together with the rent and there’s no option to autopay a variable amount in the portal they use. I might have to look into that and see if there’s a better way.
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