Budget May 8 - May 22

Our budget keeps being abysmal. I know I only have myself to blame (and my husband) as we are the primary users of the budget. 

I think the problem is nuanced. Of course I think the problem is nuanced because I don't want to just blame myself. Inflation is sky high and my husband isn't going to get a raise this year of any significance. I shop and make decisions on whims without checking the budget sometimes which is definitely not a good idea. We are doing a lot of dyslexia tutoring and we have high line items like piano lessons and karate. Groceries and gas are also expensive. 

We need to make some serious changes to our budget (and ourselves) because debt is not an option. Neither is running out of money after 4 days which is what happened this pay period. It always stresses me out not to have at least a little wiggle room in the budget! 

These are all choices we have to make. 

Here is what we spent for May 8-22nd with a budget of 2,400.

May 8-15th

• Barton Box 4 and 5 $700
• iCloud $10
• Homeschool books $45
• Krogers $400
• Health Nut $50
• Tithe
• Subset $31
• Amazon $374
• Poshmark $211
• Homeschool Evaluations $80

Above we spent 1,952 which left 448 for the next week. And we had our electric bill to pay so I had to pull our 250 that we saved last week which was a real bummer. Obviously I over spent at Amazon and I overspent at Poshmark. 

What did we buy on Amazon?

• These pants for Becky
• These shirts for Reuben 
• A Tie Dye kit. (can you guess what we are doing with the pants/shirts?)
• Dishcloths 
• Frog Hand Towels 
• Lavender Hand Towels
• A bra
• Toothbrush Holder
• Shoe Heel Protectors
• Film
• Beach Bag
• Four movies: Infinity Train, OTGW, Ponyo, E&C
• Marco Polo Picture Book
• Goggles 
• Copy Paper
• Cardstock 
• Wood burning kit

After looking over this list I obviously didn't need 3/4th of this stuff and it's super random. I need to stay off Amazon... 

I did need a new bra, I did need the heel protectors, and the school book for next year on Marco Polo...but I could have gotten the copy paper from Walmart and saved $1...actually the Amazon copy paper is terrible I will not be buying it again. Even the kids don't like it. The kids loved the Infinity Train movie but they hated E&C and didn't even finish it. I could have kept going thrifting to look for things to tie dye. We went 4 times and I only found stuff for me and Esther... so I decided to buy the older kids a few things since they wanted to do it too! 

The list above tells me I did a lot of not looking at my budget and just adding things to the Amazon cart on a whim and thinking "50-75$ here and there won't matter," but yeah it does matter if you do it 4-5 times! 

Step one to fixing our budget: stay off Amazon! And Poshmark! 

Here is what we spent the second week with a budget of $698.

May 15 -22

• YouTube Premium $23
• Electric Bill $234
• Yoga Membership $95
• Farmers Market $60
• Chick-Fil-A $25
• Ice Cream $11
• Gas $30
• Aldi $8
• Krogers $15
• HD $38

That was $539...

Next week we will start over again again and hopefully make better choices! I only can laugh. Yes, its super embarrassing to post this but I hope from here on out we can change and move on from the little bit of spurge buying we participated in this last fortnight...

Here is to next week. I'm going to make fried rice for lunch.