Weekly Budget – Week 20
By Matt - Sunday, May 10th, 2009
When it comes to these weekly budgets I have kept my finances completely separate from my wife’s. The budgets that I have been posting have been my weekly spending and that is mostly because she’s a private person that doesn’t share her financial information. We share our spending and one week I might give a bit more to the grocery spending than she does and vice versa. I think going forward I am going to start including mostly my spending but at times hers as well. There is no reason to keep things like grocery spending completely separated.
Here is my budget for this week:
| Weekly Budget May 11 – 17 |
||
| Budget | Actual | |
| Alcohol | $50.00 | |
| Food-Lunch | $10.00 | |
| Food | $150.00 | |
| Gas | $25.00 | |
| Entertainment | $0.00 | |
| Smokes | $30.00 | |
| Misc | $50.00 | |
| Transportation | $30.00 | |
| Stupid | $10.00 | |
| Total | $360.00 | |
This is definitely an increase from my typical budget. I have mixed a couple categories that were somewhat divided before. The biggest one is food, this upcoming week I expect that I will pay for the groceries and even if I don’t this is approximately what we’ve been spending for the three of us every week. This does include food and stuff for the baby.
Other than that I’ve allocated approximately $50 for alcohol which is an unnecessary expense but we have a long weekend coming up and it’s nice to have a beer or two when we get home from work and after the baby is asleep. I know that there is room for improvement in this budget but at the moment we are able to work this budget.
Question for my Readers
How do you handle items in your budget that are unnecessary but fall into the quality of life category? For example having a beer or some wine with dinner, unnecessary but if you enjoy something like this being forced to remove it becomes an issue of quality of life.
This entry is filed under 2009, Weekly Budgets.
3 Responses to “Weekly Budget – Week 20”
1 Paula says:
May 12th, 2009
at 2:18 pm
I’ve just found your site and enjoyed reading the last few posts you’ve made. I think your goal is a terrific one and I wish you luck.
I still include items like alcohol in my newly tightened budget, but I’m careful what I buy. I prefer wine over beer, and my previous average per bottle was between $10 and $12. I have discovered two or three really nice boxed wines recently, which sell for around $20 each. The box contains the equivalent to FOUR bottles of wine, for an avg per bottle of $5. Just cut my wine spending in half!! I can justify that easily. Also some of the wines at Trader Joes are quite good and around $5 to $8 per bottle (not the two buck Chuck though!)
You might also look at your food budget. You are two adults and a baby spending $150 per week for food. My food budget for one adult and two teenage (bottomless pit) boys is $150 and sometimes I come in under budget. Do you cook? menu plan? There are some great ways to drop that number significantly if you try. Knocking out 1/3 of your food budget would mean $2600 per year for your savings/investing or repayment of debt.
Good luck and good for you for starting (relatively) early towards your goal.
2 Revanche says:
May 29th, 2009
at 5:43 pm
When I was still line-item budgeting, misc. items came out of the most applicable funds. Beer, wine, dining out all came out of food. Now it comes out of the whole expense fund, but I keep in mind how much I’ve spent overall to make sure I’m not slipping into bad habits. As long as my spending stays under a certain weekly amt total, $75, I’m ok.
3 Revanche says:
May 29th, 2009
at 5:44 pm
Wait, I lie, I’m only allowed $75 per month.
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