One of my goals for October was to do weekly budget check-in, both with the Big Guy and here on the blog. The hope is that this will allow us to drill down on our budgeting goals – like I discussed in 3 Things Our Budget Failure Taught us:
What do you and your spouse fight about?
Experts say that couples fight about three things: money, kids & sex. We fight about all 3 at times, but our budget is definitely the point of most contention. He wants gas to go places during the day in our SUV, but I want him to only go places 2x per week to save gas. He wants to grab subway on the way home, and because I’m hungry, I agree.
But even though I’m the saver and he’s the spender, It’s not his fault.
It’s mine.
Seeing as today is the second Saturday of October, here goes our first Budget Check-in!
Groceries
Budget: $300
Spent: $172
Gas
Budget: $400
Spent: $137
Eating Out
Budget: $40
Spent: $34
Overall Thoughts:
Pretty good so far! I had upped our gas budget to $400 from our normal $300 because of our trip 2.5 hours north of our house the first weekend in October, and so far I feel pretty good about our gas costs.
What we’ve spent in groceries so far, while it is high considering we’re just a bit under halfway through the month, it also included $100 of groceries to feed 60 people at our daughter’s birthday. Price per person, that’s not so bad, but it definitely takes a dent out of our grocery budget.
And we’re over budget on eating out. We ate one meal out while visiting family, and I should have upped our budget just a bit to account for that :-)
……So that’s it, our first budget check-in! How is your budget looking 11 days into the month??
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Just wondering if you adjust your budget mid-month when you know you’ve underestimated your expenses for the month? It was something I had never thought about until we went through Financial Peace University (Dave Ramsey). But it does make a big difference for us in our mentality as far as instead of thinking we “failed” because we went over budget… we feel more in control of our choices because we purposefully choose to take money from another category. For example, if I know we are going to be about $50 short for groceries. We will decide to take $50 from the entertainment fund to cover the groceries and only do “free” things for entertainment the rest of the month.
Best wishes!
I don’t :-( I have considered doing that, but for me, it’s kind of a dangerous path to go down. I find that if I allow myself any leeway to adjust, I’ll start adjusting things I shouldn’t be! However, once we’ve paid off our debt, I can totally see ourselves doing this – it does make more sense as far as “control” goes :-)