I spent another $50 on gas Sunday, but that comes from a different budget. And because I don't know yet how much I will budget for gas and vehicle maintenance, I am keeping track of all those expenses and will report at the end of April.
Monday and Tuesday were both no-drive, no-spend days.
Wednesday was my Doctor's appointment and on the way into town, I stopped at my bank to buy up a roll of loonies ( $25 worth of $1 coins) so I have parking money for the meters. As I have mentioned before, the medical office building is beside Giant Tiger, so I went in to buy up some of the weekly specials after my appointment.
 |
| Non-food items cost $23.00 |
 |
| Proteins (including plastic cheese slices) cost $15.41 |
 |
| Two large tomatoes and spring mix salad greens totaled $4.00 even. |
 |
| Pantry items cost $7.92 |
 |
| When I checked the mail, I found this FREE sample pack of Temptations cat treats that I asked for. Brucie and Hannah no longer live here, but I will pass it on the my son and his GF when they come for dinner on Saturday. I washed laundry Monday in cold water, homemade laundry detergent, and hung outside to dry. I received Dahlia bulbs and flower seeds on Easter Sunday. I planted them in potting soil inside to give them a head start. I still have marigold and Shasta daisy seeds left to plant.  The package was supposed to hold one Dahlia bulb, but there were 7 tubers which I planted in peat pots. I hope they all grow. The egg cartons hold zinnia seeds. I don't have great luck with growing seeds, but it doesn't hurt to try again. The pink watering can holds a lovely plant arrangement that my daughter and two grand kids brought to me on one of their trips here. I will have to divide the four plants one day. The large glass trifle bowl had a chip out of the rim, and I hated to throw it away. So I filled the bottom with smooth polished rocks from the Dollar store, some potting soil, and planted some succulents in it. I have to thank my SIL for that idea. She was here to help me purge the dining room. Because the glass was chipped, I couldn't give it away to the Thrift store, so we were able to save it from the Landfill. The two rocks on my window ledge are amethyst crystals and my dog is intently watching high school students walking past the house. I worked outside for a little while cutting back dead growth from the winter and pulling grass and weeds from one of my front yard flower beds. It is still very wet and chilly outside, but if I start now, I may build up some stamina from not having worked outside in months. I have also pruned the red-twigged dogwood tree in the back yard.    |
Aaaaargh, looks at all your rhubaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarb! I want it!!!
ReplyDeleteI love, love, love, the idea of the succulent garden in the trifle bowl! I have a trifle bowl that I never use and I was thinking that I would copy your idea but then remembered that the kittens chew on all my plants. So maybe next year when they've calmed down. I don't know where to stick this idea to remember to do it, though. Oh, I know, I'll schedule a reminder on my Google Calendar for next 5/1/18, referring back to this post!
You probably need to track your gas and car maintenance for more than a month to get a good handle on how much you should budget for that. Is your car a newer or older model?
Perhaps total up the known expenses such as your tags, registration, inspection, oil changes (every 3 to 5K miles), cost of snow tires when you need to have them put in/taken off and divide it by 12 months to know how much to put aside for those every month? Then try to think of all the places where you regularly drive every week and estimate the mileage using something like Google Drive to get at least a baseline if how much you drive. If you know your car's gas mileage, then you could estimate how much to set aside at least for gas, based on today's prices. When I get gas, I always reset the trip odometer to zero after writing down how many miles I drove since my last fill-up on my receipt. Then at home, I've set up a spreadsheet to calculate my gas mileage (how many miles I drove since the last fill-up, divided by how many gallons I've just bought). Of course, driving in town with all the stops and accelerations really affect my gas mileage a lot. I use less gas when I drive long distances without stopping, at a steady pace. So keep that in mind when you calculate your trips to the grocery store vs. perhaps your trips to go visit your dad and stepmom or your friends. I can help you with the spreadsheets, if you want. I could set one up in Google Sheets and share it with you so you could then just use that one (or copy it and start your own, for privacy purposes). It's really not that complicated.
Good luck staying away from the chips!
I am a paper and pen girl, but yes.... I would really appreciate keeping track on a spreadsheet, if only to print it out and keep it in a drawer. Haha. You have forced me to see that there are so many things to account for over the length of a year, and I can see where this will involve more than how much gas I use. My knowledge of car maintenance is nothing more than getting inside and turning the key. Rick took care of the vehicles, but he also did most of the driving.
DeleteSince I put together my succulent trifle bowl, my SIL has made two. She found the most beautiful large glass bowls in the Thrift Shop for her projects. They cost next to nothing because I guess these are items that people are discarding when they start downsizing.
I got through two evenings of Netflix staying away from the Stax potato chips. Yay!
You can definitely track your expenses by hand if you're more comfortable that way, but it's way more time consuming. The learning curve of a spreadsheet has to be taken into account if you don't know anything about it, but it's really a huge time saver, especially if you use it to budget in advance, as you can change numbers and have the calculations adjust themselves automatically.
DeleteI can't remember how much you do know about how a spreadsheet works. Watch this 5 minute video about creating a spreadsheet to make a fuel cost calculator and see if it makes sense at all. If so, you can easily recreate this in Google Sheets (a free online program), or download OpenOffice Calc, which is free as well but that you download to your own PC. If it's all Greek to you, I'll create one in Google Sheets that I'll share with you (although I think you'll need to create a google email address) and you can play with it.
If you're at least familiar with spreadsheets, I could explain to you how I use one for my budget. You can also see templates that have already been created in Google Sheets and see if any might be helpful.
You're doing exceptionally well with the Stax potato chips temptation, and I say that as someone who's had chocolate liqueur cake from Aldi for breakfast both yesterday and this morning!
Susan, as a pen and paper person, myself, here's what I did when I first went about setting up a budget: yes, I kept a spending log for a month, writing down each and every penny I spent and on what, which I later categorized a bit - groceries, utilities, car expenses (broken down into gas, maintenance/repairs, registration, insurance, etc.) Then, I sat down with my check book stub and wrote down what I spent on what and where for the past year. That way, you can see how much you paid for car registration, vehicle repairs, etc., fairly quickly, and you might also find those once or twice a year expenses that you might otherwise have missed. It gives you a somewhat approximate estimate. I'd add 10% or something to that to account for inflation and use that as my budget to start with. Then, keep track and adjust as needed. Spreadsheets are convenient, as Nathalie said, but I am not too savvy with them, so I just created a table, typed in my line items of categories, printed a bunch of copies and wrote in the amounts by hand.
ReplyDeleteHa, ha, plastic cheese slices! Oh, I haven't had those in years and suddenly, I am wanting some!
I've been saving some egg containers to sprout seeds in, myself! And wanting to plant some succulents in containers - no trifle bowls, but I do have a cut glass bowl with some hard water stains and some other china containers. Just need to get the rocks to put at the bottom.
By the way, I thought of you when I was at the grocery store, today, and saw the price of rhubarb - $2.99/lb. I was tempted to buy, but thought I'll wait till next month (my grocery budget is all but finished for this month!)
Hope you have a lovely day, today, and a fine weekend, ahead. Take care.