That was my idea too but yeah probably not worth giving up the current Amazon rewards. I use one card with the best cash back for all my grocery spending, one card with the general category best cash back for personal/pet spending, one card with 5% back at home improvement stores, and Target’s card at Target. Normally I just look at what I pay off each month to have a general idea of how much I’m spending in each area.
1 Like
Okey dokey… I didn’t manage to get on my computer last week so this is my two week spending update, where I see how good I was at guessing my spending.
I realized I forgot a few categories (like my security system I no longer obsessively check to see if Housematenant is home or not) so I’ll have to tweak them a bit and redo the SUMmin’ - for now House Stuff = household items and house project related spending. My paychecks are whomp whomp compared to normal when I have call weekends so I’ll have to adjust that expectation moving forward :0
Yard stuff: tool rental, plants, mulch. Oh and a fire pit. This year is the summer I spend a lot of money finally getting my yard and house updated, augmenting from my DooDooDoo fund as needed, because the interest rate I’m charged there is crazy low compared to decreasing my pre-tax retirement savings, and because I am never going to be skilled at finding free stuff while working the hours I work (it’s taken me a looooong time to be ok with this since fun stuff is spendy even when it’s on sale).
I half expected my food spending to be higher, so I’m glad I’m close-ish to my budget guess! Having a line item for liquid spending has kept me accountable and held me to only the box of wine q 2 weeks I contribute to weekly neighbor wine night 
6 Likes
We very rarely budget, we mostly just track. ie we don’t make spending decisions based on where we are at, we just take out of the savings account (a sinking fund for anything lumpy) and move on.
The spreadsheet is tracking to see how much we spend in a year (rolling 6 month for where we are tracking to, rolling 12 month for actual). I use the rolling 6 month to gut check on spending out and clothing, because it is easy for me to do hedonic inflation there. 12 month is a key input into our FIRE numbers.
We have columns for monthly bills (electricity, natural gas, internet, phone, home insurance), cash and credit cards. The monthly bills column helps us remember if we have paid those bills, because the internet bill goes to an email account we can’t figure out how to check easily, and the phone bill hasn’t shown up a few times.
- Cash is as it is withdrawn from the bank. We do not track where it goes or when it is spent.
- Credit card is how much we spent on the card minus any work expenses, any house expenses, any charity, any travel, any health. The calculation is in the spreadsheet itself, so if someone decided to go back there is enough of an audit trail.
- House expenses and charity are tracked on another tab along with bills that aren’t paid monthly like property tax and water. I look at this annually to see if my expectations are in line for our RE numbers.
- Travel is counted just as a lump sum for that particular trip, we don’t track how much was airfare, accommodations, food, or experiences. e.g. I know the 2007 NZ trip was 6900 and London 2014 was 6400. I sometimes have conversations like ‘is this yarn a true hobby expense, or is it really travel?’.
- Health/dental is tracked on another tab, because mostly it is reimbursed, but it won’t be when I RE, so we needed to have a few years worth of data to estimate it out.
So all the money movement is tracked to the penny, but I only very rarely go granular on what we spent it on.
ETA: actually that last comment is a lie. I do not track how much money goes into savings or investments. I have never tracked that. I track our invested assets, but not the difference between what we’re putting in vs. what the markets are doing.
4 Likes
I can’t find the discussion on food prices to quote, but yeah I’m pretty sure my chicken breasts used to be <$15/kg and now they’re $20/kg. Beef mince has had a similar price increase. I just checked my old emails for online ordering from last year, and it looks like it’s changed sometime in the past 6 months.
3 Likes
Maybe it will improve when he gets the fancy new job! 
1 Like
If they force him to use a company CC it might, but it’s like 100% the same role just at a new company lol.
2 Likes
I was thinking the new manager might be a bit more on the ball.
Ooooh. Yeah that’s possible, then it would only be a 2-3 week delay depending on approval and paycheck cycle.
1 Like
What about opening a second Amazon account and card under whichever of you isn’t the primary on the first one? Then use one account for business stuff and the other for everything else - it would take a bit of time and energy to set up
1 Like
It would cost the membership fee. They wouldn’t cover it since he could just use the company account. I’m not willing to pay $120 a year for making tracking easier, alas.
1 Like
My spouse and I do this with the REI card (1% cash back). One account is for our actual expenses, one is for work expenses. Reeeeally helped simplify our tracking.
ETA it was a $20 one-time fee though (and we both had accounts from before we got together), not a big annual fee.
1 Like
Bahaha I totally forgot Prime costs money 
Yeah that amount yearly isn’t worth it!
$20 once is a lot more palatable!
1 Like
It’s the weekend again!
Not too much has changed for me. Slowly adding to the groceries and other categories. The bike repair costs are in so that category has plumped up. ;D
I’m also still planning to spend $200 doing a fabric shopping trip next week, though that should in theory be fully paid for by BQMS income. 
(I’m anticipating another $400 to post soon).
Just chugging along. So far there have been no surprises in this tracking which is reassuring. Basically, I am spending about what I thought. Which is great!
9 Likes
Food as of June 19 = 403
No additional takeout, but I splurged on pork belly from the high quality butcher because I am still trying to make a ramen bowl I am proud of.
3 Likes
#goals
2 Likes
Lol
Strike that. I just spent almost $200 on (2) bathing suit options so my spending this month is higher than normal. 
OH WELL.
A) Gender expression requires me to have a new situation and,
B) I realized I hadn’t actually bought a new suit in 10+ years anyhow.
10 Likes
So looking at what I spent this month and it’s less than what I bring in so that’s good. I budgeted 200/month for groceries but only spent 150. That’s with buying anything I wanted. I do shop at Winco which is the cheapest store. It also includes going out with friends for lunch or dinner as I want to. After taxes and HC I bring in 2300/month and the COL is fairly high. The key is having a super low mortgage and no car payment. Don’t know if I will ever need a new car as mine only has 61k miles on it and I put on about 5k/year. It’s a Toyota so reliable. I have savings to replace if I need to. My pampered pooches are expensive but I have good doggie HI for when I need it. My friend has made out having the insurance so I decided to try it.
5 Likes
the aspirational RE clothing budget is 100/month, which I justify by saying there will be no work clothing
$40 on socks and underwear this month, so I guess that means no replacement runners until July
2 Likes
the braised pork belly was very good
the slow roasted pork belly is in the oven now
eta: pork belly was $24. a bowl of ramen at a good restaurant is $12-$18.
2 slices per bowl, 8 servings, makes it $3/bowl discounting any other time or materials
3 Likes
| Catagory | Spent as of 6/22/21 | Budget | Remaining |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mortgage | 442.25 | 475.00 | 32.75 |
| Health/Dental | 226.00 | 226.00 | 0.00 |
| Utilities | 0.00 | 171.00 | 171.00 |
| Groceries | 485.34 | 470.00 | -15.34 |
| Gas/Transporation | 29.65 | 40.00 | 10.35 |
| Car Maintenance, etc | 35.00 | 35.00 | 0.00 |
| Car Insurance | 0.00 | 108.00 | 108.00 |
| Cellphone | 123.13 | 125.00 | 1.87 |
| Pets | 0.00 | 50.00 | 50.00 |
| Dining Out | 65.46 | 125.00 | 59.54 |
| Entertainment | 20.97 | 75.00 | 54.03 |
| Donations | 10.00 | 25.00 | 15.00 |
| Fitness | 0.00 | 15.00 | 15.00 |
| Clothes | 87.75 | 100.00 | 12.25 |
| Household items | 68.35 | 125.00 | 56.65 |
| Travel | 11.00 | 300.00 | 289.00 |
| Gifts | 0.00 | 50.00 | 50.00 |
| Misc | 0.00 | 35.00 | 35.00 |
| Puglet | 34.65 | 50.00 | 15.35 |
| Total Spend | 1,639.55 | 2,600.00 | 960.45 |
Well Groceries really got up there fast! Hoping to avoid the grocery store this week but I’m sure we’ll need to do shopping by next week so I except to be over budget there by about $100. Over all doing pretty well Groceries aside. I need to add up the June Utilities and I’ll get those added in by next week, also still need to add in my ThredUp purchase but I haven’t seen it hit my Credit Card yet. Other than that I think I will come in overall under budget for the month.
4 Likes