It's been a rough couple days for the budget. Actually to keep things positive, it was really the stock up trip to Costco that made things all crazy. I now have $9.94 until next payday (11/25) if I want to stay within my spending plan for this paycheck. That's not going to happen. I should be good on groceries, but $10 for 9 days?! I don't think that'll work out very well.
I'll take a look at it, really I should probably break up the $145 spent at Costco over this paycheck and next paycheck. If I put say $40 or $50 of the Costco grocery spending on NEXT paycheck's budget I should be able to stay on budget for the month overall and have more then $10
Anyway, spending for today was pretty light. I had to go get a prescription filled, and while I was waiting I picked up a couple things on my grocery list. It's crazy, I've never thought to buy canned foods at a drug store. I needed to get diced tomatoes for pasta sauce tonight, and it was on sale for $0.89 a can (from $1.39). I picked up four since this is generally a staple type product for us. I felt even better about my purchase when I checked the price at the grocery store. They had it on sale too, but for $1.00 a can. Who knew drug stores had good sales on food? I also picked up a couple bags of chocolate chips (my favorite brand, and my boyfriend's favorite type of cookie), which were on sale for $1.50 from $2.59 and some more rolled gauze (seriously, bandaging between your toes is crazy hard).
Grocery shopping was pretty uneventful, just some veggies for a couple planned pasta dishes - things we don't buy at Costco since the quantity would go to waste. My spending would have been a lot better, but I had problems with the ground sausage. I checked with my boyfriend this morning to see what kind of meat he wanted in his half of the sauce (I don't eat meat), and he said to pick up ground sausage. No problem I think, I can do that, it's not like I'm choosing a cut of meat. Ugh! It was actually pretty comic, there I was with my basket of veggies trying to determine if there was a difference between "ground beef" and "ground sausage"!! I finally got the one thing I could find that actually said "ground sausage" - made from pork, I guess maybe that's the difference - but it was $6.50!! For a little tray! I'll have to consult with my boyfriend this evening and figure out if I even bought the right thing.
Wow, that was a long post. Anyway, here's the spending breakdown:
11/15:
$17.81 grocery store
$10.00 prescription
$11.49 drug store
11/14
$15 cigarettes
$4 coffee
11/13
$23.18 phone bill
$9.94 left in budget
Where'd my budget go?
November 16th, 2005 at 12:49 am
November 16th, 2005 at 04:53 am 1132116823