Sunday Evening Post #14
New website, new name, time to start a new habit with the Sunday Evening Post!
The new sub-title is Personal Finance in a World of Excuses, one of my excuses in determining my budget is that if I don’t normally spend in one of my budget categories, I don’t officially budget for it. That can cause budget overruns or I need to find somewhere else to pull the money from.
Would you believe I don’t budget any money specifically for our dogs? Their food and treats are generally bought at CostCo, so come out of our grocery budget. And we rarely buy them new toys, and vet visits are covered by savings… You see the excuses piling up?
As this year draws to an end, I need to start planning my budget for next year. There are some things that are up in the air, like after C (the hubby) graduates this spring, will he go on for a second bachelor’s, will he apply for a master’s, or look for a job? That’s part of life that I can’t plan for. But I can plan for what we’re going to spend on the pets, what we’ll do with the $400/month in rent we’re now getting from JZ (the roomie), and what we’ll do with the $400/month we’re currently paying toward the basement work when that’s finished up after April.
So, as part of Sunday Evening Post, to help keep myself accountable, I am now going to be listing all the spending for the week (M-F), and the category it should be coming out of.
Day Amount Place Category
Monday $116.79 Vet Pets
Monday $44.80 Safeway Groceries
Wednesday $157.56 Website host Allowance
Friday $101.41 CostCo Groceries
Friday $53.38 CostCo Pets (dog food)
Friday $32.02 Safeway Groceries
Saturday $39 Taste ofIndia Eating Out
Saturday $76.63 The Dreaming Allowance
Saturday ~$40 Gas Car
Sunday 32.09 Fred Meyer Groceries
The way I’ve been calculating groceries (which includes the dog food), we spent over $250 on groceries just this week. We should still be in budget for the month, and we are trying to get ourselves down to grocery shopping only every 2 weeks again, but our monthly budget for groceries is $450. So far for the year, we’ve been averaging under $400. I’d like to drop next year’s budget to $375 (taking out the dog food, but adding JZ). $250 every other week isn’t going to cut it.
Now, Monday’s shopping was stocking up on a sale price item. And we had a couple purchases to make at CostCo that are once every 4-6 month kind of things (like the dog food), but a week like this makes me think I need to keep a closer eye on where we’re spending our grocery money.
I agree that not budgeting for things that you don't normally spend money on can get you into trouble, because there are a whole lot of irregular expenses most people have over the course of a year. But, I don't think it's a huge deal if you include pet food in your grocery budget as long as your grocery budget amount really does include pet food too. It's more of a labeling thing, if that makes any sense…
It's not a huge deal because our grocery budget was meant to include the dog food. However, we now have JZ, who will be kicking in for food expenses. I don't think it's right to ask him to also subsidize the dog food (though he would, without question), so I need to revamp my 2012 budget to pull pet expenses out of the grocery budget.
Your pet expense is not that ad. Mine was sky high in October (need to write a post about it.) I love your new look and the header. Welcome to the challenge (again.)
Well, our total pet expense for October is looking to be about $600, $540 of that in vet/Rx bills. We picked up one last round of anti-biotics for the Junebug last night. Here's hoping these get this infection (whatever it is, because we see no signs beyond the swollen glands) under control. Otherwise, November will also turn into an expensive month.
Congrats on the new website. I LOVE the new name and find it very appropriate for you 🙂