{November} Financial Friday – week 2

As I mentioned last week, I’m not getting paid for the rest of the month. My paid leave ran out, and I don’t return to work until the week of Thanksgiving. Things are pretty tight (for me, at least.) I’m trying not to spend what’s in my checking accounts (I have two) and I’d rather not dip into my savings account or our emergency fund. Although I know that they are available to be, I am trying my best not to use loans, however, should I fall on hard times I know there are places like https://www.sofi.com/personal-loans/ that could help us through a rough patch.

So let’s see how I did this week…

Housing
$209 Budgeted ~ $209.99 actual
This won’t change. I had this all budgeted and spent at the beginning of the month.

Food
$210 budgeted ~ $85 actual
I only spent $80 on groceries last week (I shop for us every other week.) The other $5 is from a Groupon that I purchased that was food-related.

Personal Spending
$168.50 budgeted ~ $98.57 actual
There has been one Target trip, and two purchases for baby meds (tylenol and pain relievers, just in case he needed them following his shots last week.) We’re also transitioning to the next diaper size in the gDiapers, and I needed to buy some extra liners. The good thing was, I saved some money by using an Amazon gift card that I scored through Swagbucks.com. I’ve got to keep thinking about these things. 🙂

Social
$76.50 budgeted ~ $61.13 actual
Three Christmas gifts, and $20 out in cash (to use for lunch or whatever.) This category is always the toughest for me.

Home
$94.25 budgeted ~ $44.81 actual
I may do okay in this category. I don’t have too many other “planned” expenses for this category for the rest of the month.

Clothes
$54.2572.39 budgeted ~ $6.41 actual
I made a return, and the money was credited back to my checking account. I added the money back to clothes, since it was a sweater I returned. The only item I’ve purchased was actually for Lucas. 🙂

Transportation
$250.75 budgeted ~ $31 actual
I finally had to buy gas. I still need to pay my car taxes, but this category should be pretty great this month, as long as no emergencies come up on my car (fingers crossed.)

There you have it. So far, so good!

Now for this upcoming week, I may pull money from savings for my haircut. There were a few things I had put money into savings to spend later – my car insurance that’s paid every 6 months, my haircut and a few other somewhat frivolous things – such as Christmas presents, if I so desire. I’m just not spending it unless I absolutely have to (and the car insurance was taken care of over a month ago – with money not from savings.) So really, I have done fairly well since going out on leave 11 weeks ago…Still, I’d rather make it through all 12 weeks with my savings still intact!