Ouch, is all I can say. We spent quite a bit on food and fun – on Saturday our pantry was bare, so we bought lunch, then we headed over to the Diwali festival downtown at night, indulged in some scrummy Indian food, then onto a bar for a 21st. The bus lockout is also wreaking havoc on my budget and probably will continue to do so all week.
$20 for gas
$20 for the bus (thanks to the lockout)
$15 that BF spent on lunches during the week and technically wasn’t supposed to…
$9.30 for dinner on Thursday and $5 for my lunch on Friday (again, with the running out of food! This week though, I drew up a meal plan. AND we spent less on groceries than normal)
$4.50 for an emergency run to the shop for toilet paper
$8.20 for lunch on Saturday
$20 cash withdrawn, of which we spent $18 on various dishes from the stalls at Diwali. So worth it!!
$8 for two drinks at the bar
$3 for BF’s contribution to a barbecue today.
I also need to pay back one of my friends for a joint birthday gift from last week – I THINK it was about $24; I asked her to send me the details again, but she hasn’t replied…
Nice job keeping track of what you have spent – that is one of the first steps in saving money…knowing what you spend! Do you have a spending plan or budget?
Generally I sit down every week and plan out what’s going where after all the regular bills have been paid. The last few months cashflow has been absolutely haywire, with flatmates falling way behind on bills and owing me hundreds, and one of them starting to pay his rent in arrears rather than at the start of the week, not to mention the havoc caused by splitting bills with the LL out the back, making it a nightmare to split up the bills every month.
THANKFULLY, we’re all moved and everything is now behind us – I have one more power bill to pay from the old house and we can finally get back to budgeting properly with a clean slate! It should also be a bit easier once I start working, and apparently now we’re in a different suburb, BF is eligible for assistance with rent (despite being told all year that he wasn’t able to get anything because I wasn’t unemployed). Waiting on those forms now…
You really have done a great job…with all those hurdles to overcome.
Keep at it. If you can do a spending plan at the beginning of the month and then keep tracking how you are doing! Well done!