Tag Archives: budgeting

August budget round up

After budgeting for just one month, I am amazed at how empowering it is! I suddenly feel this huge weight lifted off my shoulders. Now that I’m monitoring where each dollar goes, I feel like we have so much more money than we did before.

At the beginning of the month, we looked over our past spending habits (we’d been tracking our spending with Mint.com for almost a year). Based on that data, we budgeted for all of our fixed expenses and set limits for ourselves for discretionary spending like groceries, pet expenses, cleaning supplies and toiletries, etc.

We came in $200 under budget for the month! That’s mostly due to the fact that we paid Tony’s health insurance for August when we signed him up back in July. But, hey, we didn’t go over our budget, so I’ll take it. :)

In all seriousness, we didn’t go over budget in ANY of our categories. It is so encouraging to look at our budget graph and see all of that green! In the past, it’s been a big mess of bright red alerts. We came in $46 under budget in groceries, $13 under budget in our miscellaneous “shopping” category, and $31 under budget in the pet expenses category.

I could probably lower the pet budget from $50 to $25 a month since we began putting money aside for Howie’s vet expenses, but I think I’m going to leave it at $50 for now since he has some vaccinations and a yearly physical coming up. We’ve only been putting vet money aside for a month, so we might need that extra money in the months ahead. In a few months, I’ll average out our monthly pet expenses and use that number for future budgets.

We were able to painlessly send $325 toward our last little bit of credit card debt and throw a total of $300 into our savings accounts.

I’ve only been doing this for a month, but I already can’t imagine life without a budget. Even when we were making twice as much money as we are now, I felt so helpless when I thought about our finances. I felt like we had no control over our spending, no matter how hard we tried to “cut back.” Sticking to a budget was surprisingly easy once we spelled it all out for ourselves.

I’m also looking forward to making changes to our budget coming up. For instance, winters are mild in North Carolina, so we’re expecting our energy costs to cut in half this fall and winter. (Keeping the apartment cool in the high summer temperatures is way more expensive than staying warm in the winter.) We’ll probably pay $40-$70 a month for electricity November through April, compared to $100-$140 during the summer months.

I have no clue what we did with that extra $60-$100 a month last winter. For the first time ever, I feel like we’ll be able to put that extra money to work and make some headway on our debt and savings instead of spending it mindlessly.

Our goal for next month is to lower our grocery budget. This month I set it at a super high $400. Yikes. Now that we’re spending between $50 and $60 a week, I want to lower it to $350. Yes, I realize that’s still super high, but I’m shooting for baby steps here. If we can hit $350 or lower next month, then it won’t be so hard to hit $300 in October. The plan is to keep lowering that until we hit our threshold for savings.

Woo hoo! Budgeting is fun! :)

Subscribe

Menu Plan Monday & Weekly grocery round up

Woo hoo! We stayed within our budget this week!! Our grand total was $57! It seems like it was easier this week, too. I felt like we were buying a lot of extra stuff (the hubby has been missing snacks, so we picked up some crackers and pretzels even though they’re not technically part of a meal). We also bought the ingredients for homemade ice cream for a special Labor Day treat. Even with all those extras, we made it!

Thanks again to everyone who offered tips and advice! :)

And now on to the meal plan for this week:

Sunday: Chicken and broccoli stir fry
Monday: Burgers and oven fries (in honor of Labor Day!)
Tuesday: Leftovers/sandwiches
Wednesday: Pasta with meat sauce
Thursday: BLT sandwiches
Friday: Homemade pizza

For breakfast we bought cereal and eggs. Lunches will be leftovers, salads, and sandwiches, as usual. We decided to keep things very simple this week. I’m sure that’s part of why it was easy to stay within budget. But hey, I’m all about simplicity!

Be sure to check out more meal plans at www.orgjunkie.com!

Grocery round-up a day late & Menu Plan Monday a day early

Here’s our menu for the week:

Sunday: Vegetarian chili (a new recipe with lots of veggies and beans)
Monday: Chicken quesadillas
Tuesday: Leftovers/sandwiches (Tony is in class late on Tuesdays, so this will be our new standard)
Wednesday: Pesto pasta
Thursday: Chicken wraps with roasted potatoes
Friday: Homemade pizza

Be sure to visit orgjunkie.com for more inspiration for your own weekly menu plan!

As you may recall from last week, we’ve been working hard to make some serious cuts to our $90/week grocery bills. After reading the great advice of the people who left comments, I took an honest look at our grocery spending. I realized we’d been throwing a lot of unnecessary stuff into the cart that was really adding up.

Things like fruit, yogurt, and juice may not be packaged snack foods, but they were still driving up our grocery total without contributing to actual meals. The worst part is, we usually end up throwing away at least some of the fruit because we don’t eat it all before it goes bad. Dumb.

Because those things are healthy and I’d like to keep them in our diets, I’m going to gradually work some of them back into the budget once we get our spending under control. In order to find a happy balance, I think it’s necessary to restrict ourselves to only the necessities for a while. Once we get into the range where we’d like to be, we can add some fruit or juice if it’s on sale. We were buying too many of those items regularly, though, and paying too much for them most of the time.

This week we made a serious effort to avoid buying anything that wasn’t an actual ingredient in a meal. It worked! Well, at least we got as close to success as we’ve even been.

I was amazed at how empty our cart was with only meal ingredients in it! I had no idea we were buying so much extra stuff, but we must have been because our cart is usually stuffed to the brim. This week it was practically bare.

The grand total was $67.66. Still $7.66 above my absolute maximum goal, but I’m cutting myself some slack because we had to buy olive oil this week (a staple that we use in most meals). One bottle should last a couple months, and we bought the store brand at only $6 for a huge bottle.

We stuck to our list except for one item. We weren’t due to buy chicken breasts for another couple weeks, but I saw a single 3.5 pound package of boneless, skinless breasts on special for $1.99 a pound. That’s the cheapest I’ve ever seen them, so I went ahead and bought the package to freeze.

Without the olive oil and chicken breasts, my total would have been $53, which is right where I’d like our average to be. Tony, ever the rain cloud over my parade [kidding, kind of :)], was quick to remind me that it’s not wise to think of the olive oil and chicken breasts as “extra” purchases outside of the budget since we typically need to pick up at least one high-priced staple each week, whether it’s bulk meat, olive oil, mozzarella cheese, or coffee. I agree with him; our weekly budget should have room for these items.

The good news is we learned a few things this week that should help us get closer to our goal in the future.

For starters, one of my strategies was to cut down on meat dishes. We tried to do that this week by adding vegetarian chili and pesto to the menu. Now I’m looking at my receipt and really looking at the costs of those meals. Expensive items like red pepper, jalapenos and three separate cans of beans drove the cost of the chili up despite the fact that it’s vegetarian. For the pesto, our recipe calls for fresh basil, fresh parsley and pine nuts. All three of those items are pricier than a cheap cut of meat.

My new strategy is to limit ourselves to only one fancy vegetarian meal with gourmet ingredients per week, if any. Homemade pizza is always cheap and meatless, so that will remain a staple. For the third vegetarian meal, we’ll find some cheaper recipe ideas in the future.

After reading some of the great advice on last week’s post (thanks to everyone who chipped in!), I also decided to include a leftovers/sandwiches night to our weekly menu. It works perfectly for us. Now that school is back in session, Tony is teaching and taking classes again. Tuesday is his late night with classes until 9 p.m. and no time in between to come home for dinner, so he’ll either bring something to campus with him or eat when he gets home. That leaves me home alone to rummage around for something to eat. :)

Despite the fact that we still didn’t reach our goal this week, I’m feeling optimistic. At least we’re moving in the right direction, and I can see a few minor tweaks that we can make to get even closer in the future. This is a slow process, and I’m just happy to be on the right track!

Subscribe

Being frugal when temptation strikes (is really hard)

Sigh. Being frugal is hard enough without the constant testing.

Today, Tony (the husband) and I were on a routine shopping trip at Target. Dish detergent (bought with a coupon), dog treats (also bought with a coupon), Raisin Bran on sale, and deodorant. We picked up our items, and because we’re masochists and we’re not doing anything else until we head out to a cookout later, we decided to browse a bit. Big mistake.

I don’t even bother looking at high ticket items anymore, so Tony saw it first. The Calphalon cookware we’ve been eyeing for over a year. On clearance. 50% off. Gulp.

As you know, we cook a lot. Aside from two Calphalon skillets we bought at Bed, Bath and Beyond with a gift card we got at the wedding, we’ve been using the same cheap cookware for two years. It’s still functional, but we’ve been dreaming of a new, high-quality set of cookware since before we moved.

So there it was. The exact set we’d been dreaming about for two years marked down from $200 to $100. It’s like the fates were trying to tempt us.

We stood in the aisle for about 20 minutes just looking at it and drooling. Tony, who I know wanted it more that I did because he does most of the cooking, tried to make it easy on me. “Let’s just go,” he said, gently pulling me away. “We don’t need it.” I knew he didn’t mean it, though. And I knew, despite his heroic attempt to save me from myself, that he was hoping I’d override his veto.

Mostly because it was something that I knew he wanted, I started making the standard excuses. “We’ve been so good this month. We deserve it.” Then the little frugal voice in my head that’s been getting louder and louder lately said, You want to celebrate the fact that you’ve saved money this month by spending money? How does that make sense?

“But because we’ve done so well, we should end up having about $300 left over at the end of the month from cutting corners in our budget. We could afford this without even breaking our budget!” To that, the little voice said, Um, up until two minutes ago, you couldn’t wait to put that toward your last little bit of credit card debt or your savings.

And of course, the excuse that used to trump them all: “We need it.”

But this time, that excuse wasn’t going to work. I reminded myself of the $100 Target gift card we received at the wedding. We discussed putting it toward new cookware, but ultimately talked ourselves into using it for an ice cream maker attachment for our stand mixer. Yeah, dumb.

To be fair, the cookware cost $200 at the time, and we didn’t want to spend money in order to use our gift cards. We did receive cash from relatives at the wedding, but we decided to use it as the first deposit into our savings account.

The fact remains, if we really needed that cookware, we wouldn’t have bought the ice cream maker first. You didn’t need that cookware so badly when there was something frivolous and fun you wanted two months ago, the frugal voice said. After all, gift cards never expire. Nothing was stopping us from saving up money to pay for the rest of it or saving the gift card until we saw a great deal like this one.

After I had talked myself out of it, it was Tony who started having second thoughts. “I guess when you think about it, we would easily spend $100 by going out to eat only four times. For that price, we can get brand new cookware that will help us cook hundreds of cheaper meals at home.”

As much as I hated to admit it, though, that’s not the point. We can easily make hundreds of meals at home with our old cookware without spending another $100.

Besides, do we really want to undo all of our hard work and restraint this month by spending money now when we’re so close to our first month of budget success? Celebrating your financial successes by spending money is a good way to keep yourself from ever really getting anywhere.

It was the hardest decision we’ve made since we decided to get serious about living frugally, but we walked away from the clearance cookware. Even though we had the money for it, and even though it was an amazing deal. Sigh.

I’m still questioning our decision. Eventually, we’ll need to buy new cookware. Will we end up paying twice as much for it and regret our decision to wait? That thought has definitely crossed my mind. But I just can’t risk getting off track now that we’re so close to our first successful month. We need to know we can do this, and we need to walk away from some good deals for a while if we’ve ever going to get ahead.

I’m sure someday, after many months of budgeting success, we’ll be able to make exceptions for things like that when the deal really is great and it’s something that we really could use. But right now it’s just too early to start making those exceptions. If we give in to every temptation from the very beginning, how will we ever get anywhere?

What do you think? Did we make the right choice? What would you have done?

Subscribe

Planning a stunning wedding ceremony on a budget

When we first started planning, we thought we were having a tiny ceremony with immediate family only, so ceremony and reception venues weren’t a big issue. That changed when we determined that we wanted to have an actual guest list.

We met at Indiana University, but our families lived on separate sides of the state. So we decided to meet in the middle and get married right where met in one of my favorite places in the world, Bloomington, Indiana. Luckily, IU has an absolutely beautiful little chapel right in the heart of campus.

I loved Beck Chapel for all four years of my college career, so I instantly knew that’s where I wanted to get married. But choosing a ceremony venue isn’t always so simple. I didn’t really consider anywhere else, but if I had there would have been a huge list of things to consider, not the least of which being price. Here are some tips for planning your ceremony without breaking the bank:

1. Get married at your church – This one is obvious. If you belong to a church or other place of worship, you can usually have your wedding there with no facility charge or only a nominal donation.

2. If your guest list is small, your venue should be too – We only invited 50 people to our wedding, but I didn’t want to walk down the aisle in a big empty chapel. Beck Chapel has a 65-person capacity. This is a deterrent for many brides who consider having a ceremony there, but it was perfect for us. We filled the chapel without inviting 300 people.

3. Choose a venue that doesn’t need additional decoration – Beck Chapel’s interior is adorned with ornate wood, and a gorgeous candelabra stands at the front of the altar. I loved its beautiful simplicity, and I didn’t think it was necessary to add flowers or other decorations. Wedding venues are often stark and bare until you add thousands of dollars of flowers and decoration. Beck Chapel was perfect just as it was. Skipping the decorations saved us a TON.

4. Find an all inclusive venue – We paid $300 to get married at Beck Chapel (a pretty big amount of money for a ceremony venue considering many people pay nothing), but that fee included the organ, organist, and a curator who organized our ceremony. The fact that we didn’t have to pay for flowers or a musician offset the high price of the venue. When you’re shopping for ceremony venues, find out what’s included with each and figure that into your final decision. Of course, if you’re like me, and you absolutely fall in love with one place over all others, then shuffle around your budget so you can afford to get married there.

5. If you’re on a really tight budget, don’t rule out getting married at home – My sister opted to have her wedding at my parents’ house. A wedding at home doesn’t have to be like the extravagant affairs you see on “Bravo” with millions of dollars in catering and decorations. There’s something very intimate about a wedding at home, and it can be the perfect solution for a private, affordable ceremony. Canopy and chair rentals are cost-effective considering the fact that your ceremony venue will double as a reception venue.

Come back next week for tips on planning an elegant reception without spending a fortune!

Just say no to the birthday lunch

It’s lunch time, and I’m sitting at my desk eating last night’s leftovers alone. Don’t feel sorry for me, though. The hardest part is over.

You see, I’m a faithful brown bagger. The majority of my colleagues go out to lunch every day, but there’s usually one of two fellow brown baggers who stay behind. It’s someone different every day, but I usually have someone to eat with me. But today is someone’s birthday, so I’m eating alone.

Saying no to the birthday lunch is no easy feat. In addition to the email reminders I’ve received for the past few days, about 10 people stopped by my desk this morning to remind me. “It’s Susan’s birthday today! I know you normally bring a lunch, but you’re coming today, right?” I politely declined. “You’re not coming? Oh, come on, you can eat leftovers any day! It’s Susan’s birthday!” Through all the pressure, I stood my ground. Not easy considering the fact that birthday lunch pressure is even greater than the everyday pressure to go out to eat.

Many people just cannot fathom why I wouldn’t want to join them. They think that if they ask me several times with varying degrees of insistence, I might change my mind. Some people get downright pushy. While I appreciate the invitations, enough is enough.

Now before you label me an evil antisocial birthday hater, hear me out. I love birthdays. I’m usually the first in line to offer well wishes and sign cards. I even used to make an exception to my brown bagging rule and join my co-workers on birthdays.

Then I started noticing how much those little exceptions were costing me. It’s not just birthday lunches. It’s all the little things that aren’t a part of the budget, but you tell yourself, “Oh, just this once can’t hurt.” Then it’s the end of the month, and you’ve blown a hundred dollars on “just this once” exceptions.

Birthday lunches used to be one of those little exceptions for me. The last office birthday was two weeks ago. There is another birthday today, and another in three weeks. I know, it sounds like I’m overreacting. Surely with all the penny pinching we do, I can afford to go out to lunch to celebrate a colleague’s birthday once a month. After all, don’t I believe in making extra room in the budget for the little luxuries? But I just can’t justify spending $10 on a lunch out when I have leftovers from last night that will be wasted if I don’t eat them today. To me, that’s not a luxury; it’s just wasteful.

Going out to lunch isn’t just a waste of the $10 I would spend at the restaurant. It’s also a waste of the delicious chicken Alfredo that my husband made last night … enough to feed a family of four, and just the two of us to eat it.

It’s hard to say no, especially when people act dumbstruck. They have a point. Who doesn’t enjoy getting out of the office to enjoy a nice lunch? I know I do. But I’ve made a commitment to save money, and unnecessary restaurant meals were the first thing to go. We have plenty to eat at home, and it costs a fraction of what I would pay at a restaurant. If I don’t draw the line at this birthday, then when will I? If we don’t set limits and stick to them, then what’s the point of setting limits?

I do believe that it’s important to make room in your budget for extra luxuries that are really important to you, but lunches out just aren’t a priority for me. I’d rather use my entertainment budget to enjoy a meal out with my husband once a month or a Sunday matinee. It may sound selfish, but if you don’t make those choices and stand by them, then you’re no longer making “little exceptions”; you’re just overspending.

I don’t want to blow my budget with a hundred little exceptions this month. So I’m just saying no.

Subscribe

Savings vs. debt: What’s your priority?

Most personal finance gurus agree on a wide range of money topics, but there’s one that causes continual controversy: When creating a budget, should debt or savings take precedence?

When we set our first zero-based budget using mint personal finance software,  we struggled with this one. Right now we’re focusing on paying down credit card debt. As of November we’ll be completely credit card debt free, and that money will then go toward a sizable chunk of student loan debt.

I’ve read “The Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey, and I think his plan makes sense for people who are settled into a home where they plan to stay long-term. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for my husband and me.

We decided that focusing on debt isn’t the best option for us. Instead, we figured out how much money we have left over at the end of the month once all of our bills and living expenses are paid. It’s about $500. So we’re devoting $250 to our savings and $250 to student loan debt.

I know, this might not make sense to some of you. However, all but 1/3 of our student loan debt is low-interest federal loans. The interest rate for those is 4%, which isn’t much higher than the 3% interest rate on our ING savings account.

I briefly considered putting the high-interest private student loan debt before savings. If we devoted all $500 of our extra money at the end of the month to those loans, we could pay them off in 3 years. After that, if we continued to devote $500 a month to paying off the federal loans, it would take another 8 years to pay those off. Of course, I’m hoping that as our income increases, we’ll have more money to put toward debt so we’ll be able to pay them off faster.

The problem is, we need to save to pay my husband’s tuition for the next two years so we can avoid even more student loan debt. With so much to save, we really can’t afford to leave our savings alone while we get out of debt.

So for now we’re splitting the difference. Aside from the minimum payment for the federal loans, all $250 of our debt money is going toward the private student loans until they’re paid off. When those are paid off, we’ll start paying off the federal loans.

It’s not completely equal, though. At the end of the month, unexpected income or surplus money that we didn’t spend goes toward credit card debt for now. Once we’re out of credit card debt, our savings accounts will take precedence and extra income will go there.

The $250 budgeted toward student loan debt is fixed until further notice. If our income permanently increases through a raise or other source, we’ll reconfigure this plan. Once my husband is finished with school, bringing in a full salary, and we’re settled in a city where we plan to stay long-term, we’ll rent a cheap apartment and start attacking our debt. We don’t plan to start saving a down payment for a house until those student loans are out of our lives.

The point is, no solution is one size fits all. This is what works for us right now, but we’ll adapt our debt to savings ratio as our lives and plans change.

What are your thoughts? Does debt or savings come first in your budget?

Subscribe

Help! My grocery bills are ridiculous!

On the advice of Kacie at Sense to Save, I’m participating in Menu Plan Monday this week by posting my meal plan for this week. I’m hoping I might get some tips on how to lower our ridiculous $75-$90 a week grocery bills. Any advice is welcome and appreciated!

Blackened catfish fillets with rice pilaf (We bought 1/2 pound of fish on sale for $4.99/pound. The rice pilaf is just rice cooked in homemade chicken stock with onion, garlic, and seasonings added.)

Balsamic pork roast tenderloin (We had a tenderloin leftover from last week. We bought it on sale for $2.99/lb. and used it for two meals last week, too.)

Tacos with refried beans (Ground beef on sale $2.99/lb.)

Taco salad (We only use 1/2 pound of ground beef for tacos, so we’ll use the leftover taco meat for this.)

Roasted chicken with potatoes (The whole chicken we bought cost $6, and we’ll use it for two meals this week and a gallon of chicken stock.)

Chicken Alfredo (Made with homemade Alfredo and leftover roasted chicken.)

Homemade cheese pizza (Homemade pizza sauce and crust. The most expensive part of this meal is the cheese, which we buy in bulk at $5 for 2 lbs. because we make pizza once a week.)

I painstakingly plan these meals out based on the sales at two separate stores, and I try to use everything up and stretch things out. I’m really frustrated by our continually high bills. We don’t buy extra snack foods, and we eat leftovers for lunch.

We do buy whatever fruit is on sale (this week strawberries, blueberries, and two peaches). The grand total for fruit was $5.25.

I realize my meal plan is meat heavy, which is why I want to try to plan more vegetarian meals to cut down the cost. Our goal is to cut costs on groceries to $60 or less per week while still eating healthy, tasty meals. Any tips?

Note: We spent about $75 on this week’s meals, which is our average grocery bill. The other $15 of our grand total went toward bulk purchases that will last us a month.

Subscribe

Saturday Grocery Round up

We had quite a day. It started with our research at the farmers market and the co-op. We didn’t make any purchases at either, because we were waiting to see what our best best would be. Ultimately, we decided to stick with trips to multiple stores to get the best deals.

Today was particularly intense, because we were out of a number of staples that we buy in bulk (coffee, mozzarella cheese for homemade pizza, and black peppercorns). Those are all pretty pricey because we buy enough to last us a little over a month. We also bought a whole chicken that we’ll roast for dinner tomorrow night, then use the leftovers for chicken Alfredo later in the week. We use the carcass to make a gallon of chicken stock.

We went to two grocery stores and Costco for the coffee and cheese.

Our grand total? Still a depressing $91. Sigh. I feel like I’m failing miserably at bringing our grocery bill down to $60 a week.

I know it’s time to make some drastic changes, but I’m just unsure of what my next step should be. Unfortunately, grocery store coupons don’t help us much because the only processed foods we buy are cereals (I do use coupons for that when I have them) and pasta. The rest is produce and fresh meat.

I know that cooking without meat is a big money saver, but we don’t have many vegetarian meals in our repertoire, and the ones we do have require expensive produce like grape tomatoes. Next week we’ll try to come up with some menus that don’t require us to purchase additional meat. We have some chicken breasts on hand in the freezer, but we usually buy some kind of meat each week. I think cutting out the extra meat will help, but I’m just afraid that our meal plans will begin to lack variety.

Anybody have any delicious vegetarian meal ideas to share?!

Subscribe