Ok, so I had planned on doing this wrap-up on Monday, but since NWEdible is doing wrap-ups on Fridays, I thought I better bust it out.
Budgets are hard.
I’m usually a pretty good budgeter, but in this short first week, I realized I missed a few items in the budget for the month.
Considerations I skipped:
- Our chicken feed co-op went out of business in September and we didn’t get any food at the end of the month as planned. We found a new co-op, but they are in North Boulder, so we had planned to make a large feed purchase this weekend. I completely forgot to include money for this in our budget.
- Halloween. The boys already have costumes, but C didn’t. Luckily, I came up with something for her (and Rick and I) that won’t cost me much, if anything.
- Halloween (again). My sister is coming to town and we have a tradition of visiting haunted houses. They are totally expensive and frivolous. I found a Group*n for our favorite one though, and it will be the one and only this year. $15 not budgeted. I know. Bad, bad, bad.
- H’s birthday. His birthday is November 1, so I was thinking November. Not thinking about invitations, etc, that will have to go out this month. We’ll see what I come up with on this one.
- Hunting. We planned the hunting for the year in November, but Rick got offered an opportunity to go with a co-worker at the end of the month. The license money is already taken care of (he had it set aside months ago), but we didn’t factor gas money for an extra trip. Another item we’ll have to see how it plays out.
Enough blathering on about things I forgot to account for.
I did have some success this week. I went to a kids’ resale shop to look for shoes for H. I also took some clothes to sell with me. After what they bought, I was able to get H some shoes and the store paid me $4.76. WOOHOO! E also badly needed new pajamas. All the ones he had were waaaay too short. Like belly-sticking-out-of-his-shirt too short. So I used that savings to buy him new pjs. They were $16.26. I deducted the $4.76 from that, so we did really well in the clothing budget category.
What did I spend this week?
Grocery store: $33.36
Clothing: $11.53
Entertainment: $15.00
Total: $59.89
That means that there is $275.11 left in my budget for the month.
I know. The haunted house. It’ll be a toughie to make up. And I’m feeling guilty for buying it.
What about you?
How are you doing with your budget? What successes or challenges did you meet in your first week?
The Lazy Homesteader 
I find budgeting to be very hard too. There is ALWAYS something popping up at the last minute. Lately for us it’s been BIG ticket items too, like car repairs. Hang in there! We have to try, right? :0)
You didn’t spend $15 for entertainment – you invested it into your relationship and building memories with your sister. Priceless really!
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