I want to put a making it rain gif here but I’m on my phone and also haven’t figured out gifs on this forum.
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Final check in!
Health: 4064.6 / 4500
Groceries: 320.78 / 400 (Very happy with this)
Personal: 134.3 / 120 (Oops.)
Good to see we can stick to the grocery budget with some to spare. Health will hopefully not be this high again for a long time but I’m happy with it.
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Final check-in…picked up a few more things to keep going on the home improvement projects and picked up something at the grocery store, but other than that they look about the same:
Home improvement: $226/$300
Bills: $60/$60
Auto: $61/$40
Food: $249/$250
Sports/Health/Hobbies: $34/$25
Travel: $0/$0
Cat: $398/$400
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This week (excluding tomorrow):
Sister time: 299.72/300. Sushi+Korean bbq+coffee
Coffee/work food: 52.49/~50
Grocery: 26.73/~50
Takeout: 0
Stuff: 22.30/20
Shopping: 145.77/150 ($40 is actually a xmas gift)
Total: 547.01/620
Monthly:
Grocery: 433.72/500
Work food/coffee: 235.66/300
Routine takeout/meals: 161.70/110
Special meals out: 527.92/450
Vacay: ~300/350
Small stuff (household, etc): 38.03/90
Shopping: 145.77/150
Total “normal,” incl shopping: 1014.88/1150
Special occ, incl bdays: ~828/750
Lessons learned:
- Planning and tracking groceries, work food, takeout weekly actually changes my behavior!
- I like the $50/week work food limit. Enough to socialize and occasional convenience, but limits the damage.
- I am a sucker for celebrations, and for treating the people I love (esp if they make less…) We do also cook together, a lot! But mid-week I don’t want to cook (esp on MY bday), and when my sis is here for 2 days…well sushi out just sounded good to all of us that night…I’m going to have to dwell some more on how or if I’d like to change this tendency…
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Finished well with, as anticipated, only spending a few dollars (approx $3) on 2 Clif bars and a soft pretzel. Likely more reflection to come but I consider the challenge a success! I felt like I did pretty well but also learned a lot about how to improve my budgeting strategy and prioritizing in the future.
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BUDGETOBER IS OFFICIALLY WRAPPED!
Thank you all for participating in this spooky budget challenge and making it super-fun. If you haven’t gotten your final week badge, you should get it shortly!
If you completed all 4 weekly checkins, you get a free stickers shipped to you. The form for submitting your address is here. You must submit your address by Tuesday, November 5th to get a sticker mailed.
(If you’re still finalizing your budget close out for the month, that’s okay. Submit your final budget numbers or results for the month before next Tuesday, November 5th, and then submit your address at the form above!)
No Stress November
If you want to keep the budgeting fun going, please consider our more chill November budget challenge: no-stress November. Here is the thread:
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Just a quick note of no changes for the month. This has made me realize that I’ve been deferring a lot of spending past the point of reason (especially clothes) and that money has been used for groceries/food instead. And now that I’ve realized this, hopefully I can make it stop! Thank you, @anomalily!!
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That’s a really good realization, Panda!
My last few days are unchanged spending/budget wise. I still have the very spendy coat on order but have a year to return it if I decide not to wear it and make do with my current jacket.
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I did – 31 days without eating out! Bow to me, for I am a golden goddess. \o/
This exercise has been VERY helpful. I don’t think I want to cut out restaurants entirely – I really do get some fun/good things from them – but I need to have them in a more specific place in my life. I’ll end up musing about this more in my journal, but it was really, really helpful and I learned things about myself that I did not anticipate learning.
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Is there a bowing emoji?
there is!!!
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I look forward to reading about what you learned! For me, I’ve realized recently that eating out tends to be less about the food and more about wanting to feel cared for by others.
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Dude YES that’s real.
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I finished the month at $3,643.79 out of a $3,600 budget. Pretty damn close.
I’m glad I have gotten back into tracking my expenses so I can see how I’m doing. I plan to continue with the No Stress November.
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Through 10/31, cumulative:
- Food: 189.52/+150 (50 in protein)
- $10 of this is protein (tilapia) from week 1
- Spent $18.52 on food in week 2 but no protein
- Spent $44.31 this week on food, $4.11 on protein (smoked salmon on closeout)
- Did not buy any general groceries this week (though I need to the next couple days) but spent $41.70 this week on protein powder - this brings my protein total up to $55.81; I will probably be buying some shrimp or fish the next grocery shop as well
- Spent $49.28 on groceries on the 28th (wow!), much of this was on staples I had run out of, but also $9.64 on some additional canned fish options (mackerel, sardines, and crab!) which brings the protein total to $65.45.
- Health: 0/+100
- Misc: 0/50
- Home: 0/200
- Education/Prof Dev: 0/100
Yeah, so the last couple of days of the month were the shittiest ever for obvious reasons, so no additional work went into eye care or professional development or really ANYTHING. But I did meet the goal for money spent on protein, so I am considering the month a WIN (cue the air horns).
Side note: the last time I spent this much on grocery was in April, which was probably another big stock-up month, and the next previous time was all the way back in February 2018.
The goal for next month is to STILL spend $50 on protein, but this will be harder as I just bought a bunch of protein powder and will likely not need to buy any in November!
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Budgetober stickers featuring this cutie pumpkin will be coming in the mail! Make sure you sign up/finish out your month if you haven’t. The form for submitting your address is here.
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OK! Final Numbers!
Utilities - 355.67 - Spent 194.58!
Food - 761.90 - Spent 756.96–just under the wire!
Transportation (gas for car) - 58.14 (OK I know I said 58.04 in my magic wand post, but I had apparently mistyped the amount the gas cost…) - Exactly this.
Household - 30.99 - Spent 4.17
The wiggler - 7 - Spent 7
Car insurance - 450 - All spent and renewed.
Cousin wedding - 20 - Spent nothing yet
Pet - 400 - Hahahahahaha (spent 978.16)
YNAB - 45 - All spent and renewed
Family Fun & Festivals - 60.96 - Spent 27 this month and 27 that I had missed from September
Fun money - 20 each - Uh, pretty sure we spent all of this. But we didn’t overspend!
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Hello,
Here’s my final update. Congrats to everyone for completing the challenge and thanks to @anomalily.
WEEK5 RESULT
Restaurants GeekyGirl: €29.15 – Mon, Tue & Wed Lunch; I took Thur off
Restaurants family: €0 – No take out during the week
Family Groceries: €0 -– Yay!! Still no grocery shopping
Uber GeekyGirl: €0 – Yay!!
Uber family: €0 – Yay!!
Personal Spending: €29.15 --Just the restaurants
TOTAL OCTOBRE
Restaurants GeekyGirl: €182.14/200
Restaurants family: 37.30€/100
Family Groceries: €229.07/250
Uber GeekyGirl: €30.96/50
Uber family: €23.66/80
Personal Spending: €607/600
I’m a little over on my personal spending but some of it will be reimbursed and I had to send money home. Being mindful about our spending reduced the family take-outs and Ubers. It seems that I didn’t need to recast the budget for those categories.
I’m really happy with the overall result and I better be because Nov is shaping up to be very expensive.
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Very last reminder to please submit your address for a Budgetober stickers. The form for submitting your address is here.
They will be getting shipped out on Friday!
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The shipping makes it not worthwhile but I’m enjoying the kitty pic a lot!
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