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$400 budget almost blown!

January 7th, 2015 at 08:37 pm

Well, I don't think I'm going to make it under my new weekly $400 budget. Boo!

We're at $382. 76 and we need to make it until Friday morning. I know I'm going over because Grandma is coming to babysit the kids tomorrow and we promised to treat her to her favorite pizza for dinner. That will cost us about $30 for all of us, which would put us at $412.76.

So close!

Some of this week's budget busters:
-DS1 school pal was allowed to invite one kid to family dinner at Chuck E Cheese for his b-day, and the pal picked him. The family is low income and we love them, so I wanted to get DS1's friend a nice gift. We spent $22 on a Minecraft Lego set and two of his favorite candy bars. I am also sending DS1 with $6 for tokens for Chuck E Cheese, to share with his pal.

-Hubby decided to take himself out to lunch and spent nearly $20 on that this week. He forgot about the budget. He also forgot his hand wraps at the boxing gym and had to pay $5.36 for another set before workout time.

-$15 at Lowe's for a new toilet tank flapper because ours decided to give out this weekend and the toilet was running. Oh, the joy of home ownership.

Without those and grandma's pizza we would have made it!
The silver linings:
-We do have two Lego toys (clearance for about $8 total) for the toy drive box, a jug of laundry detergent (sale, $2.50) and a container of dish soap for our box of donations for the homeless families foundation. I may be on a budget, but I don't believe in being stingy with charity.

-My friends gave me lottery tickets for Xmas and I won $36! I'm planning to put that in my piggy bank this week, since there is no extra in the budget.

-Next week might not be so bad, as we just refilled the groceries and that should last us through the weekend.

I'm sticking to the budget because I know it will be good in the long run, but it's frustrating not to make it the first week.

Here is what we've spent money on so far this week:

$68.13 Aldi, groceries
$63.88 Kroger, groceries
$22.81 Lowe's-- toilet repair kit and pantry moth traps
$47.88 fancy ground coffee at Starbucks
$20 Target, new earbuds (hubby)
$14, lunch at Skyline (hubby)

$47.39 Kroger, groceries (plus $3.50 donations for homeless family f.)
$35.87, Aldi groceries
$8, itunes, education apps for DS ipad
$38.38, Target, for cleaners, $20 birthday present for boy in DS's class, and $8 for two lego sets on clearance for next December's toy drive

$5.06 lunch Wendy's (hubby)
$5.36 boxing gym, (hubby forgot his hand wraps)
$6, money for son to buy tokens for friend's Chuck E Cheese dinner

4 Responses to “$400 budget almost blown!”

  1. ceejay74 Says:
    1420663475

    Are you then going to start the next week with less than $400? That's what I do with groceries; if we're under budget I save the money for future grocery spending; if we're over, then we have less the following week to work with. It tends to average out over time.

  2. ThriftoRama Says:
    1420665004

    I wasn't planning to. I was just going to stick with the $400 a week. It's easy to keep track of, and I have other incentives in place to keep me on track. Plus, even just limiting it to $400 is such a drastic change to just not having any plan at all this past year, that I want to see if it's realistic. If it gets crazy like we're always missing it I might reconsider.

  3. Kiki Says:
    1420667253

    Weeks tend to be harder for me to plan for sometimes. Would you be happy if your two week goal (under 800) or monthly goal (under 1600) happened every month?

  4. ThriftoRama Says:
    1420667699

    I would be happy. I think if we are on or near this amount it will really get us on track for our other big goals and still leave money for trips and other bigger expenses.

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