Receipt Review: 10/12 – 10/18
Tomorrow, Dima and I will be reaping the fruits of our $60 challenge: that is, $20 for each of us to spend out with our friends. How did we do at budgeting in this city of luxury?
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- I promise I’ll get better at scanning
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- so you can see better next time
GRAND TOTAL (accounting for groceries that will last longer than a week): $66.42
We went over. Mea culpa. I didn’t leave enough room in the budget for fresh produce and we got hungry for it: extra produce was procured. We also both ended up borrowing a few dollars from next week’s budget, finding ourselves stranded at work (me) or school (Dima) without enough snacks.That’s okay, because this was our first try at such a constricting weekly budget. We’ll know more and be able to plan better next time we want to eat out.
Reviewing receipts isn’t just about individual weeks. It allows me to make sense out of broader, formerly vague spending patterns. I now know approximately how long my bag of coffee lasts me (13 days), how long a quart of milk lasts me (7-9 days), and how often I need to replace my sugar (2 months) and flour (1 month). These expenses vary, just like our gas and electricity bill, but tracking allows me to set aside enough money for them. If push came to shove, I’d rather go without coffee than electricity–but I’d really kind of like to always to have both.
Janine
October 18th, 2009 at 10:20 am #
Quote: “If push came to shove, I’d rather go without coffee than electricity–but I’d really kind of like to always to have both.”
Love this!!
admin
October 18th, 2009 at 10:51 pm #
Thank you!
wwkrissiewear
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:38 am #
I took a Quicken class on Monday at Barnard. They have a FREE online tool for tracking your finances… maybe something to look into? Also, do you budget just by receipts or do you track in Excel or some other spreadsheet program? And finally, how did you decide to do weekly vs. monthly budgeting? You have a wealth of knowledge I want to tap into
admin
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:41 am #
Hey Krissie! I had been thinking about starting to use Quicken to track not our groceries but some of our other variable expenses like co-pays and toiletries. I will definitely look into it now that you recommended Quicken. I used to use an excel spreadsheet, but with the time crunch I have just been tracking receipts. Aside from staying on track at the store, we put them on the refrigerator each week so we can see what we’re spending.
Wealth of knowledge? I’m not sure about that! I’m just learning as I go along.
For groceries, weekly budgeting is just a natural thing for me, with the exception of groceries that last longer, which I do have to track on a longer-term basis.
One part of it is that I do Weight Watchers, and that puts me in a weekly frame of mind. Then there’s the work week, which also structures my thinking in a weekly way. I think if I told myself “you have $200 for the month,” it would be harder for me to stay on track each week, since that is how often I plan menus and buy groceries. I also find that budgeting my groceries weekly keeps me from wasting any food. If I plan menus and buy only what I need to make them, then I end up using everything I buy.
It might be helpful to budget monthly if there’s a big something to save up for; that probably would have made last week easier. If I knew I was going to eat out a particular night and was thinking monthly, I could allot $25 for that and then tell myself, “Now instead of $50 per week, you have $43.75 per week.” Thanks for getting me thinking!