Week 3 marked the first consecutive zero-dollar days! To celebrate, I’m letting myself off the hook for daily posts, but still tracking receipts for weekly summaries. Weekly spending was not my best, since a $30 sundry supply restock yesterday tipped the scales just over double my goal at $203.91. The actual grocery portion wasn’t too far
The second installment of EcoNOMical comes in the form of a review. I consider myself passionate about wine, but not necessarily a wine snob, so I figured I’d try some boxed varietals in the hopes of lowering the cost of my wine habit (without sacrificing enjoyment, of course). A few days ago I cracked open (figuratively –
No-spend Sunday might become a thing around here. If I can get my shopping trips down to two days per week, I think I can reign in my spending much better…and if I can come up with no-cost plans for half of my weekend, I won’t even feel adrift in a sea of uselessness! Yeah,
Realization: Either break out coffee from the rest of the grocery budget, or increase said budget to account for coffee comprising nearly one third some weeks. We like good coffee in this house, and go through a full pot most days of the week. Sometimes we forego coffee on weekends, but it still works out to about
Curveball time. Earlier in the week a wise person suggested “maybe if you know Tarzhey is your weakness, change your shopping habits so you don’t have to go there.” I happen to respect this person a great deal, and had every intention of putting this into practice before the next Tarzhey essential popped up on
Somehow yesterday’s revelations did not discourage me from yet another grocery run today. Turns out although I am not too bad about emotional eating or shopping, my Southern roots often lead me to fixing others’ problems with food (or trying to, at least). $42.61 went to groceries today, mostly for the housemate (who is going
The past week came in much better than the first, at less than $200, but is still about twice as much as I want to be spending in the average week. Let’s see where things fell short (or rather, long): Real food – $115 Wine hoard – $32 Necessary household stuff – $25 Health/beauty –
I had originally planned to present my shiny new budget today… but then I found an excuse to go to my favorite frenemy, Tarzhey. That excuse was the unexpectedly early return of my housemate, which translates into the week’s provisions lasting until maybe late tomorrow rather than through Friday night. Granted, the two (!) boxes
Today I technically spent about $200 in recurring personal and professional services, but since those are part of an already-defined budget I am excluding them from the “what the heck do I do with my money anyway?” analysis. Instead I’ll focus on the fun and exciting thing I did with almost $30 of my hard-earned
Low-spend, high-reward day, made possible by previous out-of-control spending (and some more carefully-deliberated purchases). Got my new cell phone activated at the local provider outpost, which happens to be conveniently located a short walk from a Starbucks. In the interest of not wasting gas and enjoying the gorgeous day, I parked in a less busy