Sunday Evening Post #15
If you did the math last Sunday, we spent almost $700 that last week in October. This week, we did much better, only spending about $235. Still, I’d like a week where we spent even less…
Day Amount Place Category
Monday 26.01 Vet Pets
Tuesday $10.00 Dentist Copay Medical
Tuesday $18.93 Safeway (snacks) Allowance
Friday $11.94 PetCo Pets
Friday $30.98 Old Spaghetti Eating Out
Saturday $107.87 CostCo Groceries/House
Saturday $13.13 Target Allowance/Car
Sunday $6.95 Starbucks N/A (cash)
Sunday $10 Fiction in 50 award Allowance
We hadn’t intended to grocery shop again this weekend, but we’d forgotten to buy pasta and cereal at CostCo last weekend, and of course, we can’t walk in there and not spend $100 (well, we can, but it’s very rare). Not that anything we bought was frivolous. But we didn’t really NEED any of it, at least not this week.
One bright spot of our spending is that we discussed the grocery budget with JZ, and it was decided he’d just give us $120/month toward groceries. That actually means my next year grocery budget will be at $240, not $350.
While it seems like we’re spending like crazy these last couple of weeks, I know that things are actually coming together quite nicely for next year.
Your vet bill is good. Our last visit cost us about 940 plus some! we also go to Starbucks every weekend. Mostly on Saturday while we are doing some grocery shopping. It is our weekly treat. 🙂
Well, this vet bill was for our 4th round of antibiotics for the Beagle, no visit, just the meds. We're at about $500-600 for this infection. It's still less expensive than our previous vet office, though, and she's certainly worth it (and more).
I can't imagine getting out of Target after spending so little. It seems every time I'm there I end up dropping almost $100 on random stuff.
Target was easy. We needed exactly two things- a water bottle for C to take to class and an ice scraper for my car. While Target is my store of choice for the random little things we need, it is not our "let's wander the aisles and see what they have" store. That's CostCo.
We go to Costco with a list, which helps us a lot in keeping things in check. Granted, we do usually find a couple of extra things to add, but it's still much better then when we'd go in without any type of list.
If we're doing a major shopping trip- like the one we'll be doing shortly for Thanksgiving, I go in with a physical written list. It's the only way to make sure we have everything we need. But for most trips, the list is just in my head. The problem is, that list contains wants as well as needs. So this weekend, besides the couple things we needed food wise, we also picked up a new set of bath towels, and then a take and bake pizza (which was dinner last night), and wandered through our CostCo's new professional restaurant section. We will be back for a new roasting pan for Thanksgiving
Lists are good. Having a number that you "can't" go over, even if it's in your head helps too. It's so easy to justify spending when you are in the store…
When we were on our crash budget, we had that number we couldn't go over, at the same time, it was less of an issue then because there was NO spening on wants. It was needs and needs only.