money date #3, 12/10/2018 (eating and christmas shopping and broken budgets, oh my)

This past week was a little rough! I made a couple of mistakes mostly due to me being lazy: I didn’t meal prep, so I turned to eating out for lunch; and then I racked up some Lyft fees because I didn’t bother trying to figure out the bus schedule on a Friday night when I was seeing a friend for dinner. Ugh. Luckily, I’m picking up some work this month that will hopefully offset some of the areas where I went over my budget. I’m ready for lunch this week though, thanks to Trader Joe’s!

Also, gonna flex for a second: my credit score went up a whooping 15 points, putting me squarely back into the “awesome” bracket.

Expenses

Lyft rides: $50.00
Poor decision making; was too lazy to figure out the bus system at night. Ouch.

Christmas shopping: $419.52
I spoke too soon on Facebook; I have two more presents to buy and I’m going to be over budget by about $75, which isn’t terrible compared to past years, BUT the silver lining here is that I budgeted for it at all this year whereas I didn’t in past years.

Coffee: $63.88
This amount is a little higher than usual because I looped in spending on food eaten with coffee—thus, food purchased within the same transaction as coffee—into this category. This is higher than usual. Oops!

Eating Out / Take Out: $122.25
Broke my budget already and we aren’t even halfway through the month. :( I either need to adjust this budget to be higher (while reducing spending in other categories) or curb my spending in this category… Sigh. Easier said than done.

Pet Supplies: $20
Still within budget.

Birthday Budget: $54.00
Still within budget.

Groceries: $74
Still within budget.

Other: I took out $500 from my savings account to pay for my next six months of car insurance. I’m not seeing my therapist at all this month, so I have $70 back that I had expected to spend.

Income

Editing: $140

Career coaching: $60

Areas of Improvement

  • I have enough groceries to eat both dinner and lunch at home for the rest of the week, and I’ll need to in order to reign in my eating out/take out budget.

  • I need to make due with black coffee from work or through my Keurig for the rest of the month or pray that my friends and family shower me with Starbucks gift cards… Hint hint.

Looking Ahead

  • Thomas and I will likely need to invest some money in car maintenance soon. The “Check Engine” light came on in our Subaru last week. :(

  • I also need to budget for my first installment of my tuition for my Copyediting Certification starting in January. Exciting, but a little nerve wracking!

  • However, I will be getting a large payout for my contract editing gig with one company in January and I’m predicting about $300 from that gig (before fees and taxes… argh).

Joanne Machin