So, today was the day we got Paycheck #1 of the December Budget that I showed you a few days ago. Of course, before this, we did have the HSA reimbursement money, as well as the money we had left from November. And to be honest, since that money was not put down in the budget we did on paper, when I went to follow the Allocation pages, I was completely lost. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to still follow what was listed under Paycheck #1, or if we needed to alter things due to what was done with the other money we had. Also, we were VERY VERY bad, and got take out twice over the last couple of days because I was too tired or didn't think of it, and never got around to soaking the beans to make the last 2 things on our meal plan. So we got pizza one night with coupons and deals, and then we got the 2/$6 meals at Burger King another night. But I knew by the time those charges hit my bank account, they'd be coming out of Paycheck #1 because we were out of the other money. But like, the clothing budget of $90 was supposed to come out of Paycheck #1, but we'd already gotten them with the HSA money. The problem with all of this, is that we put that HSA and other money in the Every Dollar App and zeroed it out. But the app doesn't have the allocation pages like the paper budget does. I would not be having any confusion if we didn't have the extra money or if we hadn't put the extra money in the Every Dollar App. So, I put it all in front of my husband and told him to figure out what we had to pay to day, and I was gonna take a shower.
He said we still had $150 budgeted for groceries, and even though we'd already spent some of it on pizza and burgers, it was okay because we had money to just keep in the bank for right now because of the clothing budget. I feel like that's not right, but I just cannot wrap my head around all of this. Obviously, we've both been bad with money, but I think it's due to actually just not understanding how this all works. I know if we sat down and redid the paper pages using the HSA and other money, we could figure it out, but I feel like there's got to be an easier way? Seriously, I just feel like an idiot for not understanding how this works. I think after I've had some sleep, I'm going to sit down with the budget pages or just print off new ones and add the HSA and other money to the first paycheck amount as if it was part of it all along, and figure it out from there. All the spending has been listed in the Every Dollar app, so it shouldn't be too hard. And maybe once I sit down with it in front of me, I'll realize what the easy way is.
I will say though, that we did not stick to our $150 budget. We almost did. We did all of our shopping at Walmart this time, and it came to $170.02 . There were certainly some things we could have put back to get it back under budget, even with tax, but after some discussion, we decided together that we'd just go ahead and get it, and knew the clothing budget money was still there, and we'd figure it out. I will try to do a post on the whole thing and show the grocery list and meal plan and receipt like I did for the last trip.
Also, before we went grocery shopping, we were going to get hubby and Ren's hair cuts at the walk-in place, because I had a coupon postcard, but they had a 90 minute wait and would be closing. We knew we'd be out grocery shopping for a while, and we had to make the decision. Were we going to eat out AGAIN, or were we going to get the groceries and then go home and cook something quickly. It was already after 4, and Hubby had to work the next morning. Both of them immediately said Eat Out! I was starving, to be honest. I had been awake about an hour at this point, so it was my "breakfast" time. So, I agreed. But I said it had to be a good deal. I mentioned the take-out family meal at Fatz that has a ton of food for $20, but they wanted to sit down and eat somewhere, and Ren reminded us that Applebees has a 2 for $20 special and she said she'd eat a kids meal and eat the fries off someone's plate lol. So, since our son, Donald was at work (he's a server/host/bartender at Applebees while going to college), we decided we'd do that, so we could get to see him (we hardly ever see him anymore). So we ended up going for the 2/$25 to get food we actually wanted, and Ren just wanted the wings that came as the appetizer. She ended up choosing the wrong kind of sauce, and they were too hot :( But her dad was a sweet heart and traded his entree for her wings. She wasn't thrilled with the sauce on his chicken either though. We don't use a lot of seasoning due to being a low-salt (mostly) household, so it's all pretty strongly seasoned to us there. But she did eat some of it. Donald was the host, and got to come talk to us quite a bit between customers. He finished all of his finals, so he's done with his first semester of his Senior year. I cannot believe he graduates in May! I'm so excited for him, and proud! Our waiter was actually another friend of the family, Max, one of Faelyn's best friends who also goes to the same university as Donald. So, it ended up being a very nice time, but then when we went to pay, Max said "someone" had paid for it already. So we gave him a nice tip anyway, and I gave Donald a big hug. We knew he'd bought our dinner, and it was very sweet of him. He does make a lot of money as a waiter and bartender, actually. He's very good looking, and incredibly charismatic, so folks just love him. We sure do!
I am SUPER proud of myself for the meal prep I did after shopping! When we got home from WalMart, it was after 7pm, so my husband had to get straight to bed. He gets up for work at 3:15am, and has a hard time falling asleep (something wen have in common). So, Ren helped bring in the bags and I got to work on prepping all the stuff we got and putting stuff away. I ended up chopping all the peppers and onions for all the meals that use them. I chunked or chopped up sweet potatoes for different meals. Everything is in separate containers and labeled clearly. We decided to get some chicken breast since it was on clearance. I put some in a freezer bad with a marinade and put it in the freezer. We can toss that in the crock pot some time and make some instant rice and a can of veggies, and we're good. The rest of the chicken, I baked with some thyme on some and soul-food seasoning on the rest, and baked it all. Then chopped it up and put into a container. We'll have some in a big salad for a dinner one night, and the rest can be put into lunch salads.
There was one Buddha Bowl we never ended up making, so we still had some roasted sweet potatoes and a handful of spinach left. I figured I could make his lunch out of it all, so I made some quinoa and put half in the bowl with it, and saved the other half for another meal later. Then I found a recipe for roasted chick peas and found out it's really easy, and we had a ton of cans of chick peas from when he was on his Nutritarian diet before July. So, I roasted those and they came out really nice. A crunchy yummy snack. So, I added a few of those to the bowl and put the rest in a container for him to take to work separately, then added some of the roasted chicken to his bowl, and made him an Asian dressing. Turned out looking pretty good, for basically being a bowl of whatever I could find.
Of course, after all of that meal prepping, it seemed like every dish was dirty, but I was dog tired, so I sat and watched Supernatural and then some You Tube. By 1am, I was getting sleepy, but I had an overtime shift at 3:30am, so I had to stay awake. So, I put the kettle on for a big mug of black chai and got started on the dishes.
The other night, I was done with being sick of how my kitchen was set up. It barely had any cabinets in it, sort of a "Bachelor's kitchen", bare bones, and we've added a table in one corner for appliances, a pantry cabinet, and my beloved Hoosier cabinet. but the Hoosier was on the wall on the other side of the walkthrough space, and the floor in front of it was always cluttered with Hubby's hobby stuff, or cardboard boxes for the cats or dog food dishes, or whatever just ended up there. And the "counter" space of the Hoosier was just always covered in stuff. it was totally unusable. And I was tired of it. So, I moved it closer to the counter of the kitchen and set it diagonal to it. It's hard to explain, and I'll get pics in the daylight if possible to show you. But basically, it's kind of sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor with the back of it facing the desk and dining area. I don't care. I already blocked view from the kitchen with the two huge bookcases we store board games on. So the Hoosier just gave me another "wall" of my kitchen. I HATE the whole "Open Concept" living idea. I want my kitchen to be its own room. A closed off oasis where I can get away from people and cook or bake or clean, and no one has to look at any mess or dirty dishes etc. I don't have to keep an eye on little kids anymore, so I don't need to see my whole damn house from my sink. So, anyway, I feel more motivated to keep the kitchen cleaner now because it feels nice and cozy, and I like being in there. I still have LOTS more to do in there, but it'll have to wait.
You know, for really just wanting to write a quick post saying I'll be back to do a "real post" about the actual budget, this turned out to be a ramble session. Thanks for reading my rambles, as always.
Hope you have a great weekend, and if you have kids off at college, I hope they come home soon. Faelyn will be home tomorrow (well today now), and in ONE WEEK she'll be getting married! ACK!
Ramble at you again soon,
Patty
He said we still had $150 budgeted for groceries, and even though we'd already spent some of it on pizza and burgers, it was okay because we had money to just keep in the bank for right now because of the clothing budget. I feel like that's not right, but I just cannot wrap my head around all of this. Obviously, we've both been bad with money, but I think it's due to actually just not understanding how this all works. I know if we sat down and redid the paper pages using the HSA and other money, we could figure it out, but I feel like there's got to be an easier way? Seriously, I just feel like an idiot for not understanding how this works. I think after I've had some sleep, I'm going to sit down with the budget pages or just print off new ones and add the HSA and other money to the first paycheck amount as if it was part of it all along, and figure it out from there. All the spending has been listed in the Every Dollar app, so it shouldn't be too hard. And maybe once I sit down with it in front of me, I'll realize what the easy way is.
I will say though, that we did not stick to our $150 budget. We almost did. We did all of our shopping at Walmart this time, and it came to $170.02 . There were certainly some things we could have put back to get it back under budget, even with tax, but after some discussion, we decided together that we'd just go ahead and get it, and knew the clothing budget money was still there, and we'd figure it out. I will try to do a post on the whole thing and show the grocery list and meal plan and receipt like I did for the last trip.
Also, before we went grocery shopping, we were going to get hubby and Ren's hair cuts at the walk-in place, because I had a coupon postcard, but they had a 90 minute wait and would be closing. We knew we'd be out grocery shopping for a while, and we had to make the decision. Were we going to eat out AGAIN, or were we going to get the groceries and then go home and cook something quickly. It was already after 4, and Hubby had to work the next morning. Both of them immediately said Eat Out! I was starving, to be honest. I had been awake about an hour at this point, so it was my "breakfast" time. So, I agreed. But I said it had to be a good deal. I mentioned the take-out family meal at Fatz that has a ton of food for $20, but they wanted to sit down and eat somewhere, and Ren reminded us that Applebees has a 2 for $20 special and she said she'd eat a kids meal and eat the fries off someone's plate lol. So, since our son, Donald was at work (he's a server/host/bartender at Applebees while going to college), we decided we'd do that, so we could get to see him (we hardly ever see him anymore). So we ended up going for the 2/$25 to get food we actually wanted, and Ren just wanted the wings that came as the appetizer. She ended up choosing the wrong kind of sauce, and they were too hot :( But her dad was a sweet heart and traded his entree for her wings. She wasn't thrilled with the sauce on his chicken either though. We don't use a lot of seasoning due to being a low-salt (mostly) household, so it's all pretty strongly seasoned to us there. But she did eat some of it. Donald was the host, and got to come talk to us quite a bit between customers. He finished all of his finals, so he's done with his first semester of his Senior year. I cannot believe he graduates in May! I'm so excited for him, and proud! Our waiter was actually another friend of the family, Max, one of Faelyn's best friends who also goes to the same university as Donald. So, it ended up being a very nice time, but then when we went to pay, Max said "someone" had paid for it already. So we gave him a nice tip anyway, and I gave Donald a big hug. We knew he'd bought our dinner, and it was very sweet of him. He does make a lot of money as a waiter and bartender, actually. He's very good looking, and incredibly charismatic, so folks just love him. We sure do!
I am SUPER proud of myself for the meal prep I did after shopping! When we got home from WalMart, it was after 7pm, so my husband had to get straight to bed. He gets up for work at 3:15am, and has a hard time falling asleep (something wen have in common). So, Ren helped bring in the bags and I got to work on prepping all the stuff we got and putting stuff away. I ended up chopping all the peppers and onions for all the meals that use them. I chunked or chopped up sweet potatoes for different meals. Everything is in separate containers and labeled clearly. We decided to get some chicken breast since it was on clearance. I put some in a freezer bad with a marinade and put it in the freezer. We can toss that in the crock pot some time and make some instant rice and a can of veggies, and we're good. The rest of the chicken, I baked with some thyme on some and soul-food seasoning on the rest, and baked it all. Then chopped it up and put into a container. We'll have some in a big salad for a dinner one night, and the rest can be put into lunch salads.
There was one Buddha Bowl we never ended up making, so we still had some roasted sweet potatoes and a handful of spinach left. I figured I could make his lunch out of it all, so I made some quinoa and put half in the bowl with it, and saved the other half for another meal later. Then I found a recipe for roasted chick peas and found out it's really easy, and we had a ton of cans of chick peas from when he was on his Nutritarian diet before July. So, I roasted those and they came out really nice. A crunchy yummy snack. So, I added a few of those to the bowl and put the rest in a container for him to take to work separately, then added some of the roasted chicken to his bowl, and made him an Asian dressing. Turned out looking pretty good, for basically being a bowl of whatever I could find.
Of course, after all of that meal prepping, it seemed like every dish was dirty, but I was dog tired, so I sat and watched Supernatural and then some You Tube. By 1am, I was getting sleepy, but I had an overtime shift at 3:30am, so I had to stay awake. So, I put the kettle on for a big mug of black chai and got started on the dishes.
The other night, I was done with being sick of how my kitchen was set up. It barely had any cabinets in it, sort of a "Bachelor's kitchen", bare bones, and we've added a table in one corner for appliances, a pantry cabinet, and my beloved Hoosier cabinet. but the Hoosier was on the wall on the other side of the walkthrough space, and the floor in front of it was always cluttered with Hubby's hobby stuff, or cardboard boxes for the cats or dog food dishes, or whatever just ended up there. And the "counter" space of the Hoosier was just always covered in stuff. it was totally unusable. And I was tired of it. So, I moved it closer to the counter of the kitchen and set it diagonal to it. It's hard to explain, and I'll get pics in the daylight if possible to show you. But basically, it's kind of sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor with the back of it facing the desk and dining area. I don't care. I already blocked view from the kitchen with the two huge bookcases we store board games on. So the Hoosier just gave me another "wall" of my kitchen. I HATE the whole "Open Concept" living idea. I want my kitchen to be its own room. A closed off oasis where I can get away from people and cook or bake or clean, and no one has to look at any mess or dirty dishes etc. I don't have to keep an eye on little kids anymore, so I don't need to see my whole damn house from my sink. So, anyway, I feel more motivated to keep the kitchen cleaner now because it feels nice and cozy, and I like being in there. I still have LOTS more to do in there, but it'll have to wait.
You know, for really just wanting to write a quick post saying I'll be back to do a "real post" about the actual budget, this turned out to be a ramble session. Thanks for reading my rambles, as always.
Hope you have a great weekend, and if you have kids off at college, I hope they come home soon. Faelyn will be home tomorrow (well today now), and in ONE WEEK she'll be getting married! ACK!
Ramble at you again soon,
Patty
You can do this. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that because it didn't go perfectly the first time out, all is lost. Sticking to a budget takes practice. If it was easy, everyone would do it and have tons in savings and no debt!
ReplyDeleteHi Crystal, I am so sorry I took so long to reply. I was pretty down about things at first, but I decided we'd just try again with the 2nd half of the budget (since our budget runs from the 15th-15th of each month basically.) And I decided not to feel guilty about going over budget and getting extra groceries to make food for my daughter's wedding this past Saturday and buying myself an outfit that made me feel good for the wedding too. I'll hopefully get a post up about the wedding and about our Christmas too, soon. Right now, I feel like I could sleep for days.
DeleteCongratulations to your daughter!
DeleteYou can do this!
I agree with Crystal- it hard to quit any habit cold turkey. It sounds like you are taking baby steps toward quitting eating out all together. You'll get there. ( Eating out is an area we need to cut back on also. #goals) I can't wait to see what you've done with your kitchen. (I love rearranging furniture. ) Hope you have a Merry Christmas. :)
ReplyDeleteWe're going to have to go vegan or at least semi vegan-would you have any recipes? advice?
ReplyDelete