WOW it’s so pretty 
Also some of your categories make me smile.
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It took me an obscenely long time to make 
And I might have to edit the post now that I’ve fixed typos and category mis-naming (the amortized category was different subcategories at first) and now I can see why I have not gotten very far in making a budget spreadsheet in the past hahahaha
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assuming I manage not to buy groceries this weekend (we’ve bought food 22 times this month - some days we visit multiple grocery stores to reflect sales and we also did some food tourism in different neighbourhoods), we’ll end up at $486 for food this month.
So I have a pretty good idea of what we’re spending for food, as every month this year has been 400-500. But I have no clue what we’ve been spending on everything else. So for June I’m going to download the past year of transactions and figure out what else our credit card has been used for to make some kind of budget going forward.
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Well they’ve made it possible to download the credit card csvs. But I need to do like 5 clicks for each one. Select the statement month from a drop down of the past year, select from a drop down that I want a csv, click download, they give me a confirmation page (why? this is literally a download, I don’t need a confirmation of what exactly I’m going to download, I could just open the file) and then I click on the confirmation button.
And then it gives me the download. And each of the download files is named the same thing. So if I haven’t kept track of which month I can’t easily tell which ones I have already downloaded without opening them up.
And the shadowy one says the transaction dates will also be a mess.
It looks good. I’m sure the UX testing was fine. But the experience is absolute crap, because the people who designed this didn’t actually think about the situations when someone would want to use this function.
There is a team in my org which has created a page I use to get my monthly check-in numbers, and they want to get people to revisit the page. But each new thing they do to the page actually makes it less useful for a repeat visitor. And this is because they haven’t the foggiest idea what type of user they expect to be using the page, what the job to be done actually is.
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I just love reading about how other people manage their money. So, hi! Lurking.
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Ok, in the past year, our credit card shows (rounded numbers) our average monthly spend:
Grocery 450
Specialty food stores 80 (bakery, butcher, cheese, fish, Korean specialty, Indian specialty, etc)
Restaurants 55
House 170 (we did a lot of painting this year, there is always something)
Furniture 75 (this includes a chair and desk for WFH, some which got reimbursed)
Electronics 65 (this includes some stuff for WFH too)
Garden 30
Books 45
Crafts 50
Clothing 135 (!)
Gifts 40
Tourism 25 (this is virtual conventions, seminars, etc)
Health 250 (! - this is before benefits paid out, insurance covered a bunch of that, but it won’t when I leave work, so good to keep track)
Hair 10
Transit 10 (low in the past 12 months, this was refilling a transit card, we didn’t use this much)
I think next I’ll look at the monthly food spend more closely, see how that has trended over the 12 months.
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Okay I think I have my spreadsheet all set up for June and tested it out with May stuffs. 
Might spend a touch more in the next few days on random shit (we go through so much fizzy water now…) but the broad strokes are ready for June!
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I would love to join in this… in a few months. I feel like I don’t have enough bandwidth for my current projects! I currently track (almost) all spending. Cash not so much, but who takes cash anymore? I just don’t look at the results.
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I was really surprised by the specialty food store average, and while that has been increasing somewhat, the main thing is a big chunk in Dec (special meals for the 25th, 31st and for some reason the 5th?), and then Apr (which was us paying for Penzeys spices and shipping)
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HELLO IT IS JUNE 1st. Or March 2020. I’m not sure which. But I have done the thing and tried to make a budget for June. This is specifically for June and is not an accurate picture of my normal spending. (I mean, aside from my fixed expenses which really don’t change aside from my rent increasing every year. 
) Anyway, I’d like to stick to the budget for this month because I feel like I’ve been spending too much recently. I’m not sure if posting here will be much of a deterrent from my overspending, but it’s worth a try!
I have a few out of the ordinary things happening this month and one of my bikes is currently in the shop because somehow I am always breaking things on my bikes. 
I have $30 budgeted for dining out, even though that’s more than I’ve spent all year so far. I figure with nice weather finally arriving, I will most likely wind up drinking a beer on a patio somewhere. I’m also getting an Airbnb with friends one weekend. I am 100% unclear on how much I will need to kick in for lodging and food, so that budget may be way off. I’m not sure. This will be my first time in years paying for accommodations that are not a campsite.
I put zeros in the hobbies, clothing, and miscellaneous categories because the goal is not to spend anything on those. Those are my problem children in general. I definitely do not NEED to buy anything in those categories in June. So here we go!
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Yes happy June ya’ll!!
@LittleWanderer your budget looks 
I am starting June off by doing like a lot of errands and spending on day one LOL. Hit up the cat food store, did some groceries, and bought booze.
So, yeah. About to start tracking.
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Whoop whoop!
I grocery shopped yesterday for $38 and was a little bummed I’m not tracking yet 
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Being more vague than others here for…shame reasons (!?!) I guess. My budget for groceries is the one I’d most like to keep in check. I’d like to spend $200 less in June than we did in May. Ready set go! 
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You can be as vague or as specific as you want! Please keep in mind my grocery budget is now subsidized by free food from work and a 20% employee discount and I’m a garbage panda who delights in eating the ‘day old’ shit.
This is not everyone and that’s totally okay. 
AKA pats your shame and tells it to be kind to you because shame is not helpful.
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I love seeing everyone’s budgets! Although was not emotionally prepared for how different my mortgage payments looks, LOL. I stopped tracking my expenses at some point during 2020 and want to get back on the wagon, and a lot in my life has changed since then.
Posting for motivation to actually figure out our fixed expenses and make a budget. This includes:
- House payment
- Car insurance
- Utilities (water, electric/gas, trash pickup)
- Recurring dog expenses: pet health insurance, prescription food, meds and supplements, groomer
- Monthly subscriptions
- Monthly donations
- Health insurance plus current health spending
- Current retirement contributions
- Phone plan
Could that be it?! We also have some big expenses coming up, including:
- Furnishing a house and making a few cosmetic upgrades
- Paying for our rabbit mitigation treatment
- Buying a package from a dog trainer
- Setting up my dog for a sedation appointment for a nail trim (can you all tell I have a difficult dog?)
- Obtaining sperm, including paying for legal fees for us + our donor, medical testing for our donor, sperm shipment, and IUI for me at some point
Who is going to pay for this?! Alright, ready for a budget.
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I like how your pie chart is broken out! Is that just in Excel or what?
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Yes, it’s in excel. It’s a “doughnut” with multiple series. It took some fiddling to get everything to line up right and colored properly, but now I can just reuse my template with updated numbers.
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Oh, that’s beautiful. I want that kind of chart.
My current tracking setup is TillerHQ + Google Sheets. Google Sheets is, I would say, “whelmingly adequate” but I often miss having real Excel.
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Okay, I’m jumping in here too! I have no idea what my income will be for the rest of the year because of paperwork shenanigans (it will be fine, just…at the mercy of the whims of the bureaucracy). So I might as well get better at tracking my expenses.
Today I updated my TillerHQ / bank account connections and finished categorizing March / April / May. Hopefully later this week I will finish generating the reports I want from that.
June is already off to an expensive start:
- $500 order at Lowes, consisting mostly of an air conditioner (non-optional, really…), tick treatment for the yard, and other sundries. Ouch. Everyone warned me that home ownership was expensive and yet…it still surprises me.
- $100 on quarterly local beer subscription
- $200 grocery order
- $80 internet bill
- $10 in sparkly glitter buttons from the internet
Planned for expenses:
- a volley of medical payments this month on the order of $4k out, $3.9k reimbursed (ugh)
- Q1 estimated tax (ugh)
- $500ish in charitable donations (I should check on this…I’m trying to switch to annual payments instead of monthly because easier accounting)
- more fun spending! canoe rental this weekend, more antique shopping, more book buying.
- I need to start setting $ aside for an eventual car purchase. Also ugh. I don’t wanna do this but we really do need a second vehicle for three people…especially because we keep needing to do things like transport 500 lbs of clay…
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