I have to confess, this whole budgeting thing is way harder than I thought it would be. It could be that I have just become so obsessive about not spending money that when it comes down to the wire and I only have $5 left, I panic.
My boyfriend was in town this past week and that is one of the rare times I am able to truly let loose and relax. When he is in town, I don’t typically rush, write to-do lists, write updated to-do lists, and spend a long time at the gym, stress about homework, extra-curricular activities or tennis. But this is the first time he has been in town since I began this budget—and looking back I realize that I wasn’t obsessing over spending my money wisely, either.
I went over my budget by $78.58 plus delved $45 deep into my summer savings for my gas-guzzling Jeep Cherokee in order to make it home to Pennsylvania tomorrow for a family weekend.
It felt wrong to go over my budget in light of this blog. I am supposed to be teaching people ways to save money, but this past weekend made me feel like a fraud. So what I’ve done is gone through my receipts that I saved, and in an attempt to let others learn from my mistakes I have thought of ways I could have avoided spending too much. In some cases though I don’t regret having spent the money…there just could have been cheaper options.
1.) Went to Lucky Strike, a fancy bowling alley in D.C with sister and boyfriend: $36.63.
•Why didn’t we just eat dinner at home? We had plenty of groceries.
•Three whiskey sours—although they did help my bowling game, did not help with saving money.
2.) Throwing random candy into my boyfriend’s Valentine’s gift bag was definitely a necessity.
•However, I could have gone to the Dollar Store and gotten that bag of M&Ms, a Kit-Kat Bar, Sweethearts, Snickers and Skittles for $5. Instead I spent $10.26 in a convenience store.
•Please don’t think I’m cheap. It’s just little things like this that I am noticing that make a difference.
3.) A smoothie at Freshens: $4.48
•I ordered it because I was super hungry after conditioning with my team, but now I realize that a cup of some unidentified fruit juice, frozen berries and ice do not add up to $4.48!
•I should have waited until I got home to snack on something I already owned.
•The smoothie wasn’t even that good.
4.) But I didn’t learn to snack at home yet. I spent another $2.21 on cereal the next day for lunch.
•I have cereal at home. I could have packed a lunch, but I wasn’t thinking.
•I know $2.21 really is not a lot, but in the end all of these additional charges add up.
5.) Driving to the airport, D.C and back twice, around town and to the airport again: $25.00.
•This charge on my credit card brought me to the grand total of $78.58 over budget.
•A simple solution would have been taking the metro to and from D.C.
•More carpooling or walking could have sufficed for our local journeys.
•I was way too excited to pick my boyfriend up at the airport so I wouldn’t have changed that. Although, I wouldn’t have minded never driving him back to the airport to leave…I bet that could have saved me a good $3.00 on gas!
I promise I will try my hardest not to give in again. This is all a learning process and I am prepared for ups and downs. Right now I am very excited to get back on track with my budgeting. I have a plan to take out less, probably about $100 rather than $150 a week, until I have made up for this past week’s mishaps.
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I really like this post! Makes me want to (or not, as may be the case) look at my own receipts.
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