Money Monday

Just a quick update on how I’m doing on the budget.  I did end up going $40 over on groceries for this past weekend.  I still have around $10 in my personal budget and $9 in my gas budget.  This should be plenty to get me through the week. 

Over the weekend I was fairly well behaved money -wise.  I did have to buy some essentials (toilet paper and dish washing liquid) that I subtracted from my personal budget to ease my conscience a little since I’m still bummed I had to put that $30 on my credit card.  However, I ended up contacting customer service at the store I bought the clothes from after seeing that the pants went on sale a few days later.  They ended up letting me “exchange” the same pair of pants and I did get an $8 credit back on my card.

I’ve also been thinking about what I can do in the future to better budget for things that may come up.  I’ve already decided to start a holiday fund envelope starting on my first paycheck in January.  A few of my grocery purchases and restaurant trips were holiday related and I think it might be a smart idea to have a fund to go to for that sort of thing.  Plus my work tends to have several potlucks or happy hours throughout the year for holidays or events that I don’t want to have to skip because my main envelopes are running low.  I’m thinking $5/paycheck is reasonable without taking too much from my other envelopes.

I’m also paying more attention to the stores I shop at and coupons.  I know for sure that if I had been going to Aldi instead Byerly’s my grocery costs would have been cut drastically.  When making lists of non-grocery items, I need to first see what I can get at the Dollar Tree or on sale at CVS (I always have a 25% off coupon there) or if there are coupons online or in the paper.  I think the next two or so weeks will really give me some insight on how to live comfortably on a budget without sacrificing too, too much.

Do you have any money saving tricks that you didn’t come up with until after you put yourself on a budget?