I'll be honest, I know we are not being as frugal as we could be. We are not doing bad at all, but there would be a little room for improvement.



Whoops...sorry didn't include the category names. They are in this order: Groceries, Fuel, Spending Money, Restaurants, Clothing, Household Goods, Alcohol, Entertainment, Gifts, Personal Care and Pets. I did include a screenshot at the bottom.

Payday was yesterday, so I'm going to close out the spending for the first half of the month looking like this. Notice the $915.67 left to budget at the top. Yep, I haven't put that money anywhere yet. I just wanted it to hang out there while we kept our spending low. There is no way under normal circumstances we would have spent that much in these categories. Most of that will end up in short term savings...college and car repairs for example.

More grocery spending. We checked out the new Sprouts store in our area yesterday, while picking up more baby spinach, himalayan salt, avocados and a couple treats. Spent $19.85. The original total was nearly $50! One of the treats that was $1.49 rang up as though we bought 20 of them!! Luckily I caught that error while at the store.

Just this morning I ordered my daughter more generic Zyrtec for her allergies. A need that I wasn't aware it was about time for. However, I see I did order the bottle this time last year, so it was time. After the balance of a gift card was applied, I spent $13.52. That was noted in the Personal Care category.

So you can see if I balance all the categories to zero we still have $22.62. We did make it within the budget that I put forth, but the categories were not as planned. And that really is how budgets can go at times. If you were doing a cash envelope, you would move money from one to another to make it work.

I'm really happy to report no spending on alcohol! It has not bothered me one bit not to drink. My husband is doing great, but when he is bored the urge is there. I'm committed for the full month of January and at this time do not plan to fund that category.

Also no out of pocket entertainment spending. We did rent a movie on Amazon last night. We used an Amazon.com gift card balance to rent it. Out of all the free content, my husband chose one to purchase. His desire to spend low is not as strong as mine!

We also spent some money at Target that is not reflected in the budget because we used gift cards. We picked the needed bar soap (bought a 10 or 12 pack), and added on a six pack of Diet Coke, a sweater on clearance for our oldest daughter and a dress for our younger daughter. Amount spent was $48.32, with most of that being clothing.

I will probably post again tomorrow with what the spending categories look like after I add to them for the second half of the month. Here is what they look like balanced to zero, or in the case of groceries and fuel a little bit left!



Oh, yes and if you see that that totals don't add up that is because we went over in Groceries, Personal Care and Pets in December, and it rolls over to the following month. All of those overages happened on December 31. We had already been paid for January, but the transaction at the commissary was in December, but it really is part of spending for January. Or at least that is how I have it set up in YNAB.