Tightening the Belt Tracking--April

[coffeegrl]

Due to some additional expenses I will be paying over the next few months, I have decided to resurrect an older type of thread for myself.  In order to help keep myself on track, I will be tracking my discretionary spending during the months of April, May, June, and July in threads on this board.  If others want to do the same and we can be in this boat together, that's great.  After looking at my budget, I will have approximately $80 per week to spend on groceries, gas, and HBA products during the month of April.  I have already budgeted in savings, weekly church contributions, and my hair appointment on April 12.  I've also got quite a bit of food stocked up in my freezer/pantry and one of my grocery stores has chicken thighs on sale this week for $0.99/lb, so may buy a couple packages to stick in the freezer. 

I'm going to try and focus on just NEEDS during these four months and stay away from WANTS.  I recently purchased several new movies from the $5 bins at Wal Mart/Target, 15 books from the public library's booksale at $0.50 each, plus I have Netflix and I work at a library, for lots of free entertainment.  The only entertainment I should be spending money on in April is to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier at the theater, but I will resist the theater popcorn when I go. 

I will start my tracking on April 1.  Anyone want to join me? 

[marvholly]

My rough budget time is over the summer as my house insure, auto insure & realestate taxes ALL are due in July & Aug. However, I have been VERY careful to save money every month toward these expenses since last summer.

[Blonde Granny]

We went to cash in February for all discretionary spending,. We wrote everything down as we really had no idea what we were spending every month. It was so easy to just swipe the debit card, but after the Target fiasco we knew we had to change some things.

We started with the fact that we take no  investment income each month, and we actually could, for non-discretionary spending live on VA disability and our 2 SS checks.  Then by using cash, we actually had a total spending picture for the month.

Our biggest monthly expense is our personal escrow account for all large yearly bills.  We put $1200/mo into it.  That covers things like insurance, Christmas, winter trips to Florida, personal property taxes and R/E tax and a few other items.

End result for February was that both discretionary and nondiscretionary expenses can be covered with Disability and SS.

It's good to know our exercise in February was  worthwhile , and that our spending is in line with our monthly income.

[❤ mollymouser ❤]

In some parts of the country, April weather is nice enough/moderate enough to go without heat or air conditioning and just "make do" with opening some windows (and closing them). This might be a good time to also see what can be done to trim your electricity/energy budgets, too!

We're also trying to dry some things indoors on racks when it's not appropriate to dry things outdoors. (Yes, we can always use a dryer, lol!) Of course, we're dry enough and warm enough here for that to work.

[marvholly]

My monthly escrow for auto insure, house insure, real estate taxes & a vacation every 2 years is $1550. I am living on soc + a VERY small pension (NOT enough to cover monthly electric & natural gas even in a warm winter).

[coffeegrl]

I spent no discretionary money today.

4/1/14--No Spend Day
1/1

[marvholly]

Then how do you pay for electric and gas?

Out of my soc check. It is the pensioin that is SOOO small it can't cover 2 of 4 basic utilities (others being water/sewer & phone).

[coffeegrl]

Since this thread has turned into nothing like I intended it to be, I guess I won't be tracking my spending here like we used to in order to help keep me in check.  

[Iggy aka IG]

Apr 2, 2014 7:37:16 GMT -5 coffeegrl said:

Since this thread has turned into nothing like I intended it to be, I guess I won't be tracking my spending here like we used to in order to help keep me in check.  

Aw, coffeegrl, I was going to join you!  Please don't give up. 

[Blonde Granny]

Start a new thread, new title and tell us how you want to track yor spending, then others might join in.