I have 4 other pots I use to remain sane.
I like the Dave Ramsey system, but as I said before I didn’t like all this cash sitting out in our house. I also was having purchases at different stores that I couldn’t absorb into the weekly money.
I came up with a similar idea but with a spreadsheet.
Those categories are:
- Dating 100 — this can not be touched by our weekly money. I think this is the pot that keeps me sane. It has been 100 dollars as long as I can remember and it did, in fact, fuel us even when we were paying for babysitters. It does include 20 bucks for a kid date night, so in reality it’s only 80 each month for me and Drew to use, but it works for us. I don’t feel deprived (mostly).
- Household 50 — much of this is used up by things we need to get from Amazon. Toner for a printer, something breaks in the kitchen, things like that, sometimes also used at Home depot for things that need fixing. I didn’t want to eat large amounts out of our weekly budget to buy things like weed spray, lumber, etc.
- Clothing 50 — The kids are supposed to be responsible for their own clothing through their allowance system, but I will pick them up something every now and then if I see it on sale or something (also if “they” buy something that’s clothes from their allowance I still use this pot to deduct it, allowance is tricky with our budget). This is just clothes. Often used at Goodwill. I will say there is some flow between these two. During season changes we may spend more on clothes, and other times we spend more on household.
- Costco 150 — I sometimes shop at other discount type stores (America’s Discount foods) and becuase I can’t usually fit those purchases into the weekly budget they often come out of Costco. I must admit this is the one I break most often. It’s a goal people, it’s a goal.
- Personal Money — we each get 50 bucks (which has recently increased) to spend on ourselves. Drew uses it for Dr Pepper and lunch with colleagues, and I use it for lunch with friends and makeup. 🙂 I have no say in how he spends his, he has no say in mine. It’s much cheaper then counseling.
The idea is to put large purchases that don’t fit into the weekly budget. I do, actually, try to get a lot of the things I normally was getting at Costco in my weekly budget. Things like paper towels, TP (I’ve gotten it from Amazon a few times cheaper), etc. Many things you can get cheaper prices for with a coupon and a sale, so I definitely try to work that angel too and work those slowly into our weekly budget.
This is the third in my budgeting series. You can read more here.
*I am not putting these budget numbers out there to be “woe is me” or “woo-woo look at me! We’re rich!” type feeling. I really think if people were more transparent with their own expenses it might make people re-think what they are doing with theirs. I am sure we spend more and less then many readers on my blog. I hope this is helpful to some of you. I would LOVE to see other people’s. There’s really no reason that our budgets have to be hush-hush. I didn’t give you my social security numbers, or how much we actually make — this is just our goal to spend.
Check out my other budgeting posts:
[pt_view id=”1aced78883″]
Leave a Reply