Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Spending Saturday & Monthly Reflection


Big things have happened in the past few days - although not so much for your reading pleasure, as you may have noticed. My Saturday Spending round up is being posted on a Tuesday. Whoops!

First, let's take care of the little details. Essentially, no spending to report in the past week. I did buy a bottle of red wine to take to dinner at my parent's house on Saturday in honor of my brother visiting. I included that in my general grocery budget, bringing my grand total on grocery expenses this month to $205.21.

I am very happy with that number.

As you know, other than bacon I didn't purchase any meat this month. We had enough in the deep freeze to last us the rest of our lives. Or...you know...a month, as it were. It might be a bit of a challenge in April to keep the spending that low. I am aiming for $225 and crossing my fingers.

I know the month is not technically over, but I feel confident that I won't be making any purchases in the next couple days, so that means my only miscellaneous spending this month was a $25 Groupon for an art class. Side note: that art class was a HUGE joke. Has anyone ever asked for a Groupon refund? Because I think this really might be deserving.

My 3 month miscellany purchase total now comes to $320.95 - only $20.95 over budget. If I hadn't bought that stupid Groupon, I would have totally made up for the February fling in Portland. Ah, well.

There were also some eBay related expenses (i.e. tape and the 9% fee that eBay charges on sales). I'm not counting these anywhere in the budget. I'm hoping that I can pay these fees and put my eBay earnings in savings. In other words, I'm having my cake and eating it too. As long as I can afford to pay my credit card bill in full and still put my designated amount into savings/Roth IRA, I'll have accomplished the impossible.

Perhaps that extra money I found lying around the house has a little something to do with it.

I also asked my husband to save an extra $200 every month. He currently contributes to his 401K and a Roth IRA, but I can see there's room for more. I reasoned that since I now make his lunch to take to work every day (and that food is included in our regular grocery budget) that he could afford to put the money he used to spend on eating out in a savings account. He agreed that made sense.

Then my husband's company sent out a notice with their pay stubs that the 401K match is discontinued until further notice. One step forward, one step back. At least he still has a job though, right?!

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