CONCUR.
6 Likes
Alright. I’m going to be in. I’m actually tracking both my personal budget and my omd budget
Oh My Dollar business expenses I have a lot of supply and inventory ordering to do for OMD prior to the holidays, including a restock on stickers sheets I only have to do every 2 years. I hate spending heaps of money at once, so I’ve been putting this off, but I’ve been saving for it in my sinking funds forever. I just need to bite the bullet. Also still deciding if I should bring back the OMD budget planner, which would cost about $900 for an order of 250. They would probably take nearly a year to sell out, and the margins are good, so I just need to decide.
Using YNAB per usual.
Personal budget challenges
The hardest part for me is going to be resisting impulse used clothing poshmark purchases. I still need to have the app on my phone because I am trying to sell some pieces, but I genuinely do not need any additional clothing right now. When I’m stressed, I tend to search the app to see if I’ve gotten any offers or good deals. And I’m going to be very stressed in October (2 classes, full-time job, a business to run with 2 pieces of media to put out, and figure skating training). So, that’s my big challenge. Additionally, it’s the lolita swap meet this month - so if I sell some clothing, I can have some funds in the budget for the swap. But otherwise, I no clothing.
I don’t usually budget much for restaurant spending, but I’m hoping to stop at the food carts on the way back from Saturday German class at least once, as I want to appreciate those businesses more and it seems a nice ritual after 2.5 hours of processing a foreign language.
Budgets under cut:
Oh My Dollar! Budgetober Budget
Overall income goal including all sources: $1,100.00
Cost of Goods Sold: $544.24
Stickers: $441.00 (estimate for 500 sheet order)
Shopify: $29
Shipping: $74.24 (will vary based on order volume)
Operating Expenses
Office Supply Restock for Holiday Shipping: $80.00
Mailgun: $9.00 (will vary based on use)
Phone: $150.00 (6 month contract)
Convertkit: $49.00
Hosting Fees: $30
Backups and Storage $26.47
Adobe Creative Cloud $52.99
Contractors: $385.00
Engineering/Editing $300.00 (estimate)
Transcription: $85.00 (estimate)
Charitable Contributions: $75
Personal Budgetober Budget
October Budget: $1,266.88 Spending
Household & Insurance – $707.11
- Rent: $615
- Water, Commons, Garbage, Sewer: $32.50
- Trash: $7.50
- Electricity: $37.11
- Household Items (detergent, TP, toothpaste, razors, etc): $15.00
- Internet at Home: $0 This is now paid for by SSO’s employer due to being remote employee, was $20 per month.
Biking/Transit – $0 - need to refill my free transit card from work
Giving + Mutual Aid – $100
Basic Food – $184.77
- Basic Groceries: $145.00
- Treats (non-essential snacks): $23.77 (a bit high because GBBO is on and I want treats!)
- Coffee/Tea For Home: $16.00
Health – $15.00
No premium through work and already hit my OOP max so no co-pays
Optometry: $15.00 (contact solution)
Figure Skating – $205.00
Ice time: $135.00 (7 weeks of ice time paid at once)
Coaching: $40.00
Bunga Pads: $30.00 (omg mine are falling apart)
Looking Good – $0
- Clothing: $0 - this is the impulse spending when stressed - and I don’t need to spend anything. I am going nowhere. I will do a costume from my costume box this year. I actually need to sell some clothing on poshmark before I’m allowed to buy anything else. Any income from poshmark goes into this category.
Extra Food + Drink – $45.00
- Restaurants: $30 - hoping to go out at least once after German class
- Coffee Out: $15
Flotsam – $10.00
- Spending Money : $10.00
Sinking Fund Goals (Don’t Expect to spend this month): $429
- $400 - Travel Fund (3 international trips between December - Feb planned)
- $25 - Haircut
- $15 - Skin Care
- $7 - Air Filters
- $20 - Gifts
- $12 - Renter’s Insurance
Savings Goals: $2,433
This is a combination of 401K, SEP, cash savings.
Retirement savings: $2,067.50
Cash savings: $366
9 Likes
Okay, setting up which categories I’m going to target for next month. A couple of them are odd categories for me, but it works well for this challenge.
Food ($350)
This covers both groceries and restaurant/takeout spending. Pushing high since actually have plans to go to a restaurant this month before a show.
Clothes ($150)
Atypical budget category since most of my clothes come from the thrift store and get lumped under ‘miscellaneous’ since it’s not worth its own category, but I’m at the point where I’ve only got one ‘good’ bra left, and my last attempt at shoe replacement also ended badly so I need to hunt down something better before the snow comes. Both of those are on my buy new/like new list.
In-progress projects ($100)
Other atypical budget category, but I’ve got a couple things that really need to get done. Primarily home improvement where I know what the missing pieces are, but some clothing repair as well since I’ve been sorting through cold weather gear and have one case where I’ll need specialized sewing supplies. However, No New Projects.
Sports/Hobbies ($10)
Recurring subscription that I still get enough use out of to keep, but want to avoid anything else in this category. Especially given the number of unfinished projects I should work on.
I’ll track other categories because I always do (home, bills, car, pets, travel, gift/donate, etc.), but not targeting them since they’re pretty well dialed in at this point.
Favorite thing about this season is that non-alcoholic cider is back in stores for hot cider in the evenings. Although I like the alcoholic kind too.
2 Likes
OK, our average spend for the past 3 months:
- Coffee shop: $83.30
- Bakery: $29.15
(Note that the coffee shop spend does include whole beans to grind at home.)
That’s a total of $112.45. So I’m going to set the goal at $100 for the month of October. Try to ease slowly into lower spending…
4 Likes
🧋 Bubble Tea Budgetober 🧋
I suspect I have the most frivolous budget challenge and am okay with that. 
Budget is two drinks a week x $8 CAD (or less) = eight drinks for the month, total spend under $64 CAD
I’ll keep a running note of when I indulged, what I spent, and report back weekly.
11 Likes
I’ll have my budget up within 24 hours to make you feel more comfortable 
6 Likes
Ok, since some expenses will be less under control than usual (this is why I have savings, spending savings when needed is what savings are for repeats as needed), I’m going to focus on my food spending. Ideally, I’d like to keep groceries AND take-out spending under $200 - we’ll see if the combo of setting the intention and tracking more closely makes that happen.
And I did just go through my expected monthly expenses at the new place, and it was good to see that the numbers really do work, even though the rent will be higher.
6 Likes
I’m in. I want to make sure I’m keeping my eating out budget under control. I work two jobs (~50-60 hours total) and often only have 1 day off during the week so its real easy to skip meal planning and prepping and just get take out. Also, I only eat out at local spots that I like supporting, so I tend to feel less guilty about it.
Goals:
Eat out 3 times or less per week
Keep my weekly restaurant spending to $40
8 Likes
Hi everyone! new here, but not new to budgeting (just not good at it yet 
) I’m in for this and my goal is managing my new cash flow now that I’ve moved to a new place that costs a bit more than before.
9 Likes
I am very much here for this. But just spent the week (and more) on the housing issue, including three phone calls and three long emails just today. And I am pooped. So please count me in. But I’ll think about my goals over the weekend/early next week. I mean, there really is only one goal right now: Get to stay in my home… But obviously the specifics could still do with a bit more work.
Thanks for doing this. Last year’s was great. And the sticker looks fab… 
6 Likes
Alright, started putting together a budget under the cut. For me, this experiment is about tracking, not optimizing, so not looking for feedback on expenses at this point.
We’re two mid-30s people in a suburb of Denver. We have a rescue dog who has a lot going on and we are trying to get pregnant.
Budget
Fixed Expenses
House payment (mortgage, insurance, etc.) $2,809.10
Car insurance ?
Water (ish, varies month to month) $80.00
Electric/gas (ish, varies month to month) $120.00
Trash pickup $23.68
Louie health insurance $29.71
Louie food $110.00
Louie meds
Louie groomer $40.00
My phone plan $35.00
Health insurance (two adults) ?
Retirement contributions ?
Coffee subscription ?
Spotify ?
Netflix ?
Internet? ?
Peloton ?
SWEAT app $19.99
Scribd app $9.99
Apple Storage $0.99
NY Times subscription $4.00
Any other subscriptions my wife pays for? ?
Recurring but Variable Expenses
Groceries/House Supplies (two adults, one with ~food issues~) $400.00
Fast food $75.00
Gas ?
Uber/public transit $100.00
October-Specific Expenses
10/1 weekend: hosting friend, maybe going out $250.00
10/8 weekend: going to a wedding out of state, bought flights but not inc. Air BnB $500.00
10/15 weekend: mom’s bday inc. present, Rocky Mountain Nat’l Park with visiting friend $300.00
10/23 weekend: hosting friends, inc. visitor $200.00
10/31 weekend: no idea, wife going to wedding, I stay home ??
Louie vet recheck plus meds (after insurance reimbursement) $250.00
“Career exploration”: dog training class? $600.00
Trying to get pregnant: supplements and OPK strips, but that’s it? $100.00
House maintenance: paying neighbor for irrigation pump repair, potentially putting money down for a/c $4,000.00
House fancification: storage supplies for kitchen, bedroom improvements $2,000.00
Potential surprise expenses
Louie health
Getting closer to finding a sperm donor
Surprise house maintenance?
9 Likes
Oooh what coffee subscription do you have?
3 Likes
I am in this month!
Last year at the beginning of the pandemic, I made some big changes to my budget when it became obvious there wasn’t going to be any need to budget for bars/eating out. Also I used to travel for work a lot more which meant not spending my own money for a large part of the month. Now that things are opening back up, but with my work travel not back to the same level, I’ve already had to move money around in the budget to account for the couple times I have gone out for drinks with friends.
Budget
My goal this month is to revise my bars/eating out/grocery budget to actually make sense again. The main categories I’m interested in tracking are:
Coffee out: $20
Bars: $60
Eating out: $60
Groceries: $150
9 Likes
Craft coffee: https://www.craftcoffee.com/
My wife did the research to pick it, so I’m not sure how it stacks up to other services, but we like it and it is cheaper than buying the fancy coffee at the grocery store.
7 Likes
I’ve never tried @Bernadette’s suggestion, but I have Trade coffee and I really, really like it. I actually only get decaf and they have some amazing decaf options
7 Likes
Glad to see I’m not the only one who needs to get some food budgeting back in line
3 Likes
I also do decaf through Trade and have found it very useful at incentivizing me to switch to decaf after my first french pot instead of drink too much caffeine - because it’s FANCY decaf.
7 Likes
I’ve been doing a great job on my basic expenses (groceries, eating out, utilities, and the like) but have gotten too spendy lately when it comes to clothes, random stuff for the house, and other general merchandise.
Also, I’ve been making far too many purchases from evil corporation with free 2-day shipping for members. My values are such that I would highly prefer to buy as much used stuff as possible instead of ordering new online. So for October, I’m going to try to keep the total of these categories under $100 total. Hopefully this is realistic.
8 Likes
Just Okay regular and great regular are like, pretty different. But normal decaf and great decaf? WORLDS apart. Not even the same universe.
6 Likes
You are speaking my language here.
I usually buy from my friend who has his own roasting biz (@sidehustle_coffee on insta (I can take this out if it’s not ok to shill for him)) on the side from his actual roasting job, but I’m the only one who buys from him who drinks decaf so unless I want to buy a wholesale sized sack of decaf I’m outta luck.
7 Likes