Aww I hope your puppers is okay! Fingers crossed.
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I went about $2.25 over on my plant budget. Is it cheating if I call it good as long as I come in under budget in another category? If I eat a little of the ornamental kale can I recategorize that plant as a grocery expense? Or do I need to wave my magic wand?
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Just do what I tell my muni clients. Amend your budget and move some from one category to another.
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Now they’re cat toys so I don’t have to count it at all since that’s not a category I’m tracking?
(That’s definitely cheating so I won’t actually do it. I’ll work on amending my budget like you said.)
(For those who don’t know I’ve had a plant cage for a while because my sweet little kittens are also tiny monsters who love to eat plants and knock them over. The new plants will go elsewhere once I have time but the spider plants always live there.)
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Ugh, only 4 days in and already nearly 1/4 of my $100 spending budget is gone. 
$19.36: a bottle of wine and some snacks for work at World Market. (Uh, that’s poorly worded, the wine isn’t for work, haha.) Finished my packed breakfast and lunch, still so starving I can’t think, don’t want to eat stuff out of the vending machine, so here we are.
$4.05: had to send this inane form to Vanguard to restore my account access. Paid for certified mail so that they can’t claim they didn’t receive it. Long story short: changed my phone number nearly a YEAR ago, forgot it was on my Vanguard account, a few weeks ago they started doing 2-factor authentication where they text you. Of course these texts are going to my old number. So I cannot even log in to my Roth to get at my account details so that I can change the number. I called and they would not change it for me over the phone even with my security questions. Instead they require a form to be mailed, requesting access. Notarized, no less! At least I found a place that would do that for free!
This is where my budget typically falls apart - I designate an amount of money for spending. All spending - everything that’s not bills or groceries. It gets eaten up with dumb stuff like unexpected postage or “oh shit, I ate everything I brought to work and am still STARVING, and I don’t want to eat crap, so I’m going to run to the Whole Foods down the street from work (only grocery store that I can make it to and back during lunch on foot, no car).” Then I get resentful because I have nothing to spend on a little treat for myself or on fun, and I throw my hands up and say “fuck this.”
(Obvious solution is to bring more food, but, well, I have some ISSUES around food and shame that don’t belong in this thread so that is hard for me. Also, I hate lugging large bags of food onto public transport in addition to my purse and sometimes the company laptop.)
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I think the solution is to budget a more realistic amount. Life happens and nothing you have bought is unreasonable.
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Could be. This will be eye-opening, at least, to see where the money’s going. I feel like $100/month of spending money should be more than enough - in fact, it feels extravagant, especially since I have eating out broken out separately.
Hmmm - should work snacks actually go under eating out, under groceries, or under general spending?
And, I mean, if I’m being honest, I didn’t need to buy a bottle of wine. It is Halloween wine, though! With a big skull on it! 
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I would put it under “groceries” (since you got it at a grocery store), if you had bought snacks at Starbucks I would put it under “eating out”. I don’t know if it matters (unless you are trying to target one of these areas). it’s just a matter of being consistent for me.
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Hm, well, World Market isn’t really a grocery store. Not a restaurant either though. Which is why I put this under spending. It is a store that sells groceries, though! Hmmm. I’ll have to chew on this (no pun intended) for a while.
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This is what I do, too.
Tris, would it also be helpful to have a budget for “oh shit fuck this” money and “oo fun” money? It sounds like one of your big frustrations is that money that you intend for fun keeps on getting funneled towards stuff that just isn’t fun (like postage for a Vanguard form). Having $100 for fun and $25 or something like that for “oh fuck this” might be might mentally easier.
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This happens to me far too often 
not whole foods necessarily, but still somewhat marked up grab-and-go food that I don’t have to figure out how to cook or do intensive prep of at work.
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Yes, that is exactly it. Or funneled toward food and then I get angry at myself for being hungry when a reasonable person shouldn’t be and blahblahblah.
I feel like I can really spare only $100 total for spending, though? Like, where does the fuck-it $25 come out of?
Yeah, it’s not like one can food prep at work! I’m glad this isn’t just me who struggles with this. It really messes with my brain sometimes.
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This is why tracking is so great. You have to face the realistic numbers and resolve the dissonances, either by changing your expectations or your behaviour. It’s a useful exercise.
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You asked a while back how to plan for discretionary expenses and I got sidetracked while typing my suggestion, so here is: I would base your prediction off past spending.
I’m not saying you are doomed to repeat your average behavior forever, but I do think it’s highly unlikely for a person to go from their average to below their 3-5 year minimum in a category overnight, without a major life change (eg, one might scrimp hard after a job loss). Looking at your history is a way to quantify what your habits are.
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That’s a great point! If I am coming from, to use a buzzword I keep seeing in self-help articles, “a place of curiosity” where I’m observing how this is working, rather than a place where I’m beating myself up for failing to live up to some arbitrary number, that will help.
I like this place. Fewer facepunches!
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You wrote World Market - and my brain read Whole Foods. But World Market sells groceries (vs prepared food). If I get food at a convenience store, it could go under groceries (food supplies, like 1 gallon of milk) or eating out (a slice of pizza or fountain drink). So, that’s a long way of saying you can do it whatever way makes sense to you. If “general spending” is an area you want to target but you think “groceries” is under control, that would influence how I categorize this purchase.
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Yeah I tend to divide by purpose. Even if it’s from a grocery store, if it’s me grabbing a pre made meal or hot bar, it’s restaurant.
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Though when I do go to the grocery store - everything I buy there goes under groceries (pet food, garbage bags, dish soap, shampoo). One receipt: One category. I’m too lazy to parse out receipts.
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Me too.
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I do split them out since I shop a lot at mixed places like Costco. So it’ll be like groceries, clothes, pharmacy, and general household, all from one transaction. Those don’t bother me too much since I tend to get them all in one big trip. Smaller regular trips to the grocery store are really only ever just groceries 
although I’m sure I’d benefit from splitting out “meals food” vs treat food to see where I’m actually at on that!
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