Money Monday: Spending Priorities and Budget Wishlists

 I ask myself WHY THE HECK AM I EVEN TRACKING MY SPENDING THIS IS TERRIBLE EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE LET'S BURN IT ALL DOWN AND ALSO BUY SOME SHOES. And then! I answer myself with a huge I DON'T EVEN KNOW; STOP YELLING AT ME.

But really? This whole thing* has been eye opening in terms of making our spending priorities visible.

*By thing I mean the totally novel concept of knowing how much money you make and how much money you spend. WEIRD, huh?

Here is how I am reading the spending tea leaves after about 4 weeks of paying attention:

 We prioritize convenience, meaning we are happy to pay more for stuff if it is easier. Yes, I will pay $8 for a package of pre-cubed squash EVERY TIME and $28 a week for pre-blended smoothies if that means my kid will get a snack before a practice (that sentence is awkwardly constructed, but there is, like, no way anyone is eating squash cubes for snack).

We prioritize driving new cars-- this is something that could have been obvious by looking at our, um, driveway, I guess. But seeing numbers on paper makes me realize that we like cars, so we should act like it-- you know? Which is why I told Ben I wanted a car vacuum and had this eye-rolling exchange with him:

We prioritize kid activities. We spend a good chunk on kid stuff-- preschool, dive, baseball, dance, equipment, high school fees, travel- all of those things. I think we already knew that stuff was a priority because we also spend time in that category. Still, on paper, it is a large expense, and we need to remember that when we talk about these things. Like, they are valuable to us, so we need to make sure we talk about them/think about them/frame them in that way.

I personally prioritize self care: acupuncture, massage, pedicures, face masks, teeth whitening, SO MANY skincare products, and! This is something I didn't really notice before, but my hair products are all very expensive. I don't use that much of any one thing or more than one or two things at a time, but at $40 a pop, it is really annoying when my cream, oil, thickening spray, heat protectant, volumizer, dry volume spray, mousse, and hair spray run out at the same time. (I am pretty loyal to Aveda and Perfect Hair Day products). Before I started tracking every dollar, I considered myself low budget because I generally don't buy a ton of new clothes, and when I do, Target, Old Navy, and LOFT sale racks are my go-tos. LOL LOL LOL.

We prioritize brands that we like over cost. Food, cars, grooming products, clothes and shoes-- we like what we like, and things cost what they cost.

I know I have only been tracking for a few weeks, but based on the data in front of me, I have a few budget wishlist items:

1. I want to better account for how much money is coming in. Both of us do some adjuncting work and other contractual things, and we are terrible at planning what to do with that money/noticing how it ebbs and flows. 

2. I want to plan some travel that is not diving or dance related (even though we have several flying trips for those on the horizon).

3. I want to gamify our budget because if saving is fun in the short term, it will be so much easier. A million years ago, we did Dave Ramsey’s cash envelopes and saved SO MUCH MONEY. Clearly cash is not king anymore, so we need to do the system digitally, but, for me, having concrete categories and a bunch of separate pots of money helps me spend less and see my savings accumulate in a really satisfying way.

APROPOS of NOTHING! (Well, I mean, this was a free activity, so maybe it’s a little on theme.)

We took Minnie to the campus art museum over the weekend, and the Petah Coyne exhibit! Almost made me cry! It’s beautiful, and I can’t wait to go back by myself and just soak in all in— when I probably will cry because I won’t feel self conscious or the need to explain myself to a preschooler.

When I was in college forensics, I did a dramatic interpretation from Zelda, a play about Zelda Fitzgerald by William Luce. (I won state and got sixth place in the nation, not that anyone would keep track of weird stuff like that from college **cough cough** hall of famer ** cough cough**). The BEST LINE in the whole play is the one quoted on the second picture. It made me cry every time. (In the play she says Nobody, not the poets, not even Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald himself, can measure how much a heart can hold.)

It was especially arresting for me, 24 years out from that performance, walking through the quiet gallery with my youngest child. How did I get here from where I was when I first encountered that quotation? (I actually saw the play in high school when a senior on my speech team performed it when I was a freshman. By the time I was a senior in college 8 years later, I figured no one would remember when the play was popular in forensics, so I decided to perform it because I remembered that script from the time I was 14 years-old). 

But seriously!  I was just young and balanced on the precipice of a universe of possibility, and now I’m almost fifty and settled into a life I couldn’t have imagined in granular detail with a daughter (my fifth kid! College me would lose her shit) who looks like a human Care Bear, and it is all too beautiful and sad and hopeful and nostalgic— exactly like the exhibit. THE TEXTURES in there! I loved it so much.

Minnie shared her thoughts over ice cream at the student union. They were delectable.

To close, here is a new Money Monday feature:

What I spent this week— the best and the worst:

The best money I spent this week was $9 on Tree Hut Watermelon body butter at Target. TREE HUT! It’s a new obsession!

The WORST money I spent this week was $30 on a campus parking ticket. ** whomp whomp** I told Coop to text me when he found his team at the campus gym when I dropped him off at diving (because there was talk on What’s App that they were meeting outside, and Coop gets there late because his school dismisses so late, so I wanted to make sure he found his people.) WELL. He forgot to text and did not answer my super chill 13 phone calls, so I had to park in short-term metered parking at a dorm down the street and drag both girls through traffic to the gym and all the way upstairs to find him. AND IN THOSE FRUSTRATING FIVE MINUTES, I got a ticket because I didn't pay the meter the literal dime this errand should have cost. GAH. Also! I pay almost $100 a month to park in my garage just a block away, BUT THAT SEEMED LIKE TOO MUCH OF A HASSLE. Sometimes, I am very dumb.

Hey! Also! I got to talk to the incredible Sarah for her podcast Best Laid Plans, and you should listen :) Thanks for having me-- it was a blast!
 

Just Another Money Monday

Part 1, written Monday, September 29  

GROCERIES. Ok. This week, I bought A TON of snacks because the last couple of weeks, I have been running out for snacks which snowballs into ALL OF THE THINGS. So. Ok. I spent $370 on groceries and $52 on random household stuff, and this what I got.

What I would like to do is eliminate single-use plastic use from my life. But in the meantime. Look at all this plastic! (I hate the giant laundry detergent containers even though we use a giant amount of laundry detergent because we keep our detergent on top of the washer, and the big containers fall off and break everywhere. So. Small it is).

More plastic! And only a couple of bathroom grooming items missing. You can pry the $3 hairspray from Ben’s cold, dead, sticky hands.

Laundry room snacks for people to grab on their way out the door:

Beverages for the downstairs fridge:

Just a couple of frozens— the kids are on a waffles and ice cream sandwich kick; Cooper loves Jack’s pizzas (lol), and Jack takes Uncrustables for lunch on the days he has clubs.

I was pretty well-stocked in terms of baking essentials, but I can always use chocolate chips and a brownie mix— also we are on an M&M cookie roll.

More snacks! And random pantry things. THIS TIME I DID NOT FORGET THE CHEEZ ITS. Also Cooper is eating more than 20 apple sauce pouches a week but almost no actual fruit. NEAT. Those Nature’s Bakery brownies have a ton of dates, tho. **eye roll** Oh! We are on a chocolate pretzel tear as well Here you might be able to spy 2 bags of white chocolate ones, and I bought milk chocolate ones at another store the other day. Dorothy also eats freeze dried strawberries at an alarming rate, hence 2 bags. These are cheapest at Trader Joe’s (ditto the pretzels) but it is not possible to shop there on football game days, so…

Fresh stuff. People are Very Into Chobani Flips right now. I bought a tub of vanilla too because maybe when the Flips run out they can make smoothies? Cooper and Dorothy are drinking either Naked Juice smoothies (SO MUCH SUGAR) or CorePower chocolate milks en route to their activities (this is working well with granola bars or those date brownies I mentioned and applesauce or strawberries). This whole category is mostly just various forms of cheese with some bagels, bread (I like it in the fridge) guacamole, and salsa thrown in for color.

Produce. This seemed lighter than usual to me, but we already had peaches and strawberries and a couple of salad kits, so I bought a little less than usual.

Dinner ingredients

I made another veggie lasagna and also a pan of bean, rice, cheese, and veggie enchiladas. We can coast on the leftovers through the first couple busy days of the week,  and then we have French bread for oven baked grilled cheese with garden tomatoes; eggs, bacon, fruit, etc, for breakfast for dinner; dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets with boxed mac and cheese and broccoli… and that should take us to the weekend when we’ll probably buy new veggies to go with impossible burgers and fries.

This is about what we spend a week at the store, but then we also spend up to that amount AGAIN in one-off trips— which is what I’d like to target and cut back on this week. CAN I DO IT? And, more importantly, can I do it without ending up with bare cupboards which I think will ultimately be worse to restock?

Part 2, written Friday, October 4.

UGH the sneaky spending! Random charges for things I didn’t even know I was subscribed to and also magazines set on auto-renew! More dishwasher repair (fixed! And! So is our ice maker!)! Just under $100 of kid-related (non-food) pop ups! My miracle face cream subscription arrived this week (WORTH IT) and I changed our Subscribe and Save to the first of the month (even though we just got it LAST WEEK LOL great planning Sarah).

BUT. ZERO ZERO ZERO extra trips out for stuff (except I did need another gallon of milk, and I also bought toilet paper because I saw a FB post about how you should not hoard toilet paper in the wake of the longshoremen strike, so I immediately bought toilet paper because I AM THE PROBLEM.) (Also, agreement reached, so I can probably stop hoarding but might not).

I even made REAL macaroni and cheese instead of boxed. And also pizza roll ups, which the kids did not love but I need to try again because they SHOULD by all measures. (I used a tube of crust, not crescent rolls, and the proportion was off). 

We did need to buy weekend dinner food (but we knew we would).

The ONLY impulse buy this week was a $5 book of color-your-own Halloween stickers from Target, and Minnie, Dorothy, and I all enjoyed them.

All told, we were still WAY OVER BUDGET. So that’s one week roughly on budget, one week way way over, and one week way over. I am starting to think the budget itself is flawed?

Part 3, written a little later on Friday

MOTHER *%^@$#.

RIGHT AFTER I wrote that previous paragraph, we spent SEVERAL HUNDRED DOLLARS on a kid sports thing. And we are now way, way over again, instead of just way over. But! 3 good things came out of those dollars (well, four because the sports thing is also good). 

    1. I was like BEN! I say this all the time about an extra dance opportunity and you are like no that's dumb, so NOW DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEEEEEEAAAAN? And he was like oh yeah, I do see what you mean because he signed up for the thing so Cooper wouldn't feel left out if all his friends signed up, and that's ALWAYS my dance argument.

2. Ben was like oh, I don't really feel like we should count the whole amount this week. It's more like counting 1/4 every time the clinic occurs, and I was like DUDE. THAT IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN SAYING ABOUT MY FREAKING SUBSCRIPTIONS. And he was like oh, I see that now... (we ultimately counted it for this week, but at least we UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER).

3. We both realized we need to make a more nuanced argument against a thing we don't want to buy that the other person wants. Like, saying WE DON'T HAVE MONEY FOR X is not at all helpful because we do probably have money for it, it's just that one person doesn't want to spend it. And instead of shutting down the conversation with that phrase, the spending-averse person should articulate their reasons against the spending. In this case, we of course bought the sports experience thing, but really only because I want to be able to rely on the bandwagon fallacy (ALL HER FRIENDS ARE DOING IT) next time a dance thing comes up.

 

Etc etc etc gets expensive, you guys

HELLO from what will be— for a little while —a regular feature of this blog, which is a Monday post where I whine about money. YOU ARE WELCOME.

My goal is to get a better handle on what I am actually spending in 3 tricky categories: groceries, Target/household stuff, and weekly impulse buys. I kicked this endeavor off last week with a no-spend week, and I am continuing my frugality kick this week (Owala released a special edition glow-in-the-dark water bottle, and I didn’t even click on it, you guys). ** 

New this week: Ben is joining in the fun and tracking his expenses, too. (Yes, we share our bank accounts, but we are both stupid bad about checking in on them EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE AN APP).

Groceries: I got a ton of comments on my previous budget post about how groceries are not part of a no-spend week. I agree because, I mean, we gotta eat. BUT ALSO-- this is a HUGE and really amorphous spending category, and it seems to be the biggest thing between us and tidy budget boxes on a spreadsheet. We are very all-or-nothing people when it comes to spending money. We either keep neat track of everything OR we just spend without even blinking an eye. And when categories get messy, we just start spending and stop caring. 

Household: MOST household stuff comes from Costco-- and we still have it, so I haven't been lately--OR from Amazon subscribe and save, which I never count in weekly spending because it's a subscription.** So, paper towels, toilet paper, ziploc bags face wash, deodorant, body lotion, Cereve, exfoliating foot balm, etc etc etc JUST SHOW UP. But then! There are things I buy at Target every week like household cleaners and seasonal Mrs. Meyers soaps (at least one thing runs out every week-- last week was Magic Erasers; this week I am out of LimeAway for the showers and Pledge, etc), some specialty snacks that are cheaper in bulk there and we don't eat fast enough for Costco sizes (technically grocery? This is why I think TARGET is its own line), random grooming products that I see are low when I clean bathrooms, laundry stuff because Costco doesn't have our faves. Just like groceries, I do a large weekly order and then pop in for more as needed-- as you can imagine, this gets SUPER EXPENSIVE especially when I throw in random makeup items or clothes for the girls, etc etc etc. Tracking the Target/house category over time should also help me figure out how much is actually going out the door there, too.

(The etc etc etcs in the above paragraph are THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A MONTH, I am pretty sure, and that's precisely what I am trying to get a better handle on).

Random surprises: Last Monday, we spent $130 on dishwasher repair (**shakes fist at universe**), and it is good, for once, to actually keep track of these things (welcome to adulthood; you're ALMOST FIFTY) (also the dishwasher is suddenly in WORSE SHAPE than before it was fixed, so we will probably be spending more soon **shakes both fists at universe like the guy in Caps for Sale**). We know that things like Coop's bday party, an appliance breaking, an extracurricular expense, etc, (there is that pesky ETC AGAIN) crop up every single month, so tracking those is also helpful when we are thinking about projected spending. I paid for our holiday card photo shoot last week, randomly— stuff like that!

Those of you who are used to paying attention to your money will be like DUH, LADY, but neither one of us is the person you would choose in your marriage -- or in Monopoly-- to be in charge of the bank. So TEAM WORK, amiright?

Impulse buys: I mean. Listen. This is the ONE PLACE we have been able to stop spending. Does it help? WHO KNOWS. Just this past week, I did not buy a new Owala color drop, the Clinique gift with purchase at Macy’s, Lulu studio pants for Dorothy when another mom told me they’ll hem them at the store, these super cute silver Mary Jane’s from Target, or coffee at the dorm Starbucks when I was observing classes. SO MAYBE? But! Not buying is not the same as SAVING.

**Subscriptions: Ok. I have a shampoo and conditioner subscription that comes every 4-8 weeks depending on when I need it, a moisturizer subscription that comes every 10 weeks, Book of the Month that is billed monthly (but I have the option of paying yearly, and this is maybe what I should do for bookkeeping simplicity), and Audible that’s billed monthly. Plus! We get a monthly Amazon subscribe and save order that always has paper towels and toilet paper and also has a rotating cast of other random stuff from this one kind of tea I like some months to quarterly bulk toothpaste. How would you account for these? Just record them when they hit the bank account? Figure that you are spending x amount of money per week for them? Give them their own category? Lump them in with other monthly stuff like streaming platform subscriptions and not weekly spending? Ben and I argued about this for awhile and didn’t reach a conclusion that makes sense to both of us. I think he thinks most of the stuff is stupid and I should just cancel it, but I am not going to do that and think the subscriptions are better because they save time and a little money and/or are things I really use (the books). Neither of us is satisfied with how they “count” on a spreadsheet. How do you account for things like this? (I could buy hers shampoo and conditioner at Target, for example, but it is $10 cheaper to just have it show up at my door. If I bought it at Target, I would track it as a POS purchase, so I guess account for the delivery the same way?)

Apropos of nothing, some random pics.

Dollhouse turned bookshelf in Dorothy’s room: (she is on the cusp of a room reno, but we are waiting for Minnie to outgrow her toddler bed)

Minnie all of the sudden started playing with the Christmas guys.

FUN BUNS

We made a PERFECT veggie lasagna— it was so good, and you can swap out the veggies for whatever you have (I happened to have the ones in the recipe, but I think mushrooms would be great in a future iteration. I also would probably do thin zucchini circles if I were doing it again— same with carrots)

** I am sort of LOLing at “frugality kick” because we came in $450 OVER our weekly budget, and we spent MORE THAN $500 on groceries (big Sunday shop; local store for coffee, ice cream, etc; Costco for pizza and salad, and another $100 on odds and ends from Metro Market, our Kroger-branded go-to store). Also! In terms of rules of a "no spend" we also did not buy ANYTHING this week (family pics, I guess?). Figuring out the burn cost of our life is... kind of a bummer.