Frustrated by how quickly a group trip can spiral out and cost more and more money as time goes on. It’s not like I’m going to get mad in the middle of a grocery store as my friends keep adding dumb things no one wants or needs. Determined to not let this happen at my sister’s bachelorette in October, which I am sort of in charge of. What do I do in the future? I think I’m landing on “have a very frank discussion about what my budget is in advance” which I am mostly fine with. I can live with the guilt of feeling like I might be a wet blanket, but the creeping resentment is harder to work through.
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Yay! I’ll be happy for the company 
.I’ve seen a huge turnaround in spending since posting.
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I’ve done a smidge better on eating out but still really bad impulse buying. Mostly safety related items for toddler proofing. I’ve held back from buying stuff for the house that are functional. It’s gonna be a while before I can afford better organization for pots or my closet, for example.
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I’m not sure if I’ll post mine here or not, but I’ve started doing these projected spends on my own too, and they’ve been enormously helpful. So thank you for the idea!!
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Yay, that’s great this is a face punch free zone so def feel free to post if you want!
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This should be my lowest spend week in a while, sandwiched between a spendy friend trip last weekend and my Maine vacation with fiancé next week. Not counting fixed costs like rent & utilities.
Projected Spending: Week of 8/30
Bag of broccoli slaw or some other veggie side for dinner tonight. Fiancé got the rest of the week’s groceries while I was gone. $3-4 
Birthday card for Dad. Could also be cute to send him a postcard in Maine instead? No more than $3 
Start the process of researching new running shoes. DSW usually has athletic shoe sales right about now…I also have Kohls and TJ Maxx gift cards. Not impulse purchasing these this week! Just looking!! 
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Plumbing: complete. Now $15,030 in debt- no interest for 18 months.
Test payment is pending, monthly autopayment of $850 is also set up.
Mr krmit’s parents generously gave us some money to help pay it off, so once we confirm the test payment has gone through we’re going to throw $5-6k at it right away.
Just as well that delta is making us not want to go out and do anything, since we’ll be cutting back on extras while we have this additional payment to make!
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This thread promoted me to have a discussion with Ponder about why I get stressed about how much we spend on food: a million little decisions, not in my control, large amount of money per month, and no matter what strategies I try we end up spending the same amount every month. We’re remarkably consistent, at least. We’re spending about $1800 on food per month for 2 adults, 1 kid, 1 baby. That covers work lunches, cafes, takeaway, groceries. If I save money in one area I guarantee by the time the month is finished that spending will show up in a different area of food spending. But I’m also transferring my stress about other stuff onto food spending. So he’s going to do brainstorming WITH me and maybe we can do a bit more teamwork around it.
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Want to share that this projection method has already helped–I went to Target for the broccoli slaw and a bridal shower card (which I forgot to include on my list) & I was able to avoid Target creep because I stuck to my plan! When I didn’t find the broccoli slaw, we pivoted to using kale from the backyard. Turned out delish.
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A discussion we had yesterday was ‘should we hold off on buying the cheese that is on sale until Wednesday so that it hits the September grocery numbers instead of August?’.
We decided the risk of them being out of cheese on Wednesday (last day of the sale) wasn’t worth shifting the spend to a different month.
Truly, what gets measured gets managed (and gamed for no reason at all)
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how does grocery budgeting work?? My household spends radically different amounts on food from month to month and I have no idea why. Grocery advice for a vegan couple who can’t comparison shop across stores?
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I see two main possible starting points if you really want to drill down on the why. You can make a price book for commonly bought items. Whenever you’re at a given store, note the prices of those items. You can also note the lowest sale price that you see. The other place to start is to divide out your receipts in the categories each time you come home and see at the end of the week or the month what they add up to in each category. When I did this, I had protein, dairy, pantry goods, snacks, and beverages.
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Usual pandemic era disclaimer: prices have been weird for us this year and I’ve been noticing as much as 1.5-2x differences for things like meat, brand name cereal, deli products etc from week to week. So maybe some of it is that!
Otherwise, yeah, tracking and bucketing expenses for a few weeks is probably the most straightforward way to go. But annoying.
Do you have particular snacks or meals that are $$? Small like changes in how often you eat almonds, or Impossible burgers, or whatever can have a big impact since they are disproportionately expensive.
I don’t do strict grocery budgeting but I do have a target weekly number and adjust my snack and alcohol purchases accordingly. 
It’s easier now that I’m doing curbside / online ordering and don’t have to tally up the prices myself.
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Oh yes this reminds me of another good option- price out your typical meals per serving! Take the, say, 4 most made meals in your house and calculate YOUR price per serving. (As someone who’s household of 3 can kill a “serves 8” recipe in an evening, lol, this is an important distinction).
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It should be easier if you aren’t shopping across different stores? I used to do x dollars per week + x dollars as a monthly stock up.
Do you have an asprorational grocery dollar? I think what I’d do is take an average $/month and make the average the budget. Then the next month reduce by ten percent. When you hit a pain point or a frequent failure point, go back a level.
It’s different if you’re brokeish. Then you just make the budget and stick and I would love to help you meal plan. Related to the pricing out meals point, if you figure out what kinds of meals you like, that’s a good starting point for the budget. Figuring out what else you buy at the store helps too. And if your takeout budget is down in high grocery months, etc.
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I have done this with cat food purchases. Just did, in fact, which is why there’s nothing but salmon cat food in the house and Boy Kitty is protesting!
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I’m closely tracking my spending over in my journal this pay period and it has been eye opening how fast what I feel is non-extravagant spending adds up. It’s frustrating because my goal spending limit per paycheck just doesn’t seem possible. Though a big problem is that I really need to change our cell phone service and I am dragging my feet out of fear that Boyfriend’s phone won’t port over to the new plan; my phone needs replaced but his does not and we really don’t have the budget to pay for 2 new phones, just 1.
I could talk to Boyfriend about no longer eating out; we take turns paying and it was my turn. I could have skipped the donation to New Orleans mutual aid. I could have not bought coffee or booze. (for home use, not out). I guess… it just astounds me that if I’m to meet my savings goals there is literally no wiggle room at all?
Argh.
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We started out with a certain amount of cash each week. When we moved to credit cards, we had trained ourselves into a fairly consistent number.
Also, we stock up on things that go on sale that we care about. Like frozen fruit is usually $5-7, but goes on sale for $3 every few months. So we keep an eye out.
I’m about to buy a half bushel of tomato for under $10 to prepare for freezing so we have meals throughout the winter and spring when tomatoes can go to 2.50/lb
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We’re in a (hopefully temporary) inflationary period. Previous goals MAY be unreasonable right now 
that’s not a personal failure though, that’s economic forces.
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