As a reminder, my husband pays the "big bills" like mortgage, phone, and electricity. I pay for groceries and the pets and that somehow evens things out.
In what continues to be a weird summer of spending, this was a weird month. I was in California to start and had to go to Michigan, too. It was unsettled and weird and it took a lot of fortitude for me to sit down and figure out how all this worked out. I honestly don't know how people who travel a lot do it. I found this so stressful.
Entertainment ($4, <1%) - I paid for parking once.
Eating out ($33.39, <1%) - This is actually more, but Dr. BB paid for a lot of meals when we were in California. And J bought lunch. And my BIL bought us dinner once. It turns out I owe a lot of people meals.
Gifts ($45.02, <1%) - I bought our cat sitter gifts for both times we were out of town and my neighbor a small gift for taking in our trash bins while we were gone.
Cars ($75.30, 2.2%) - Filled up our clunker twice and a rental car twice.
Personal care ($112.26, 3.2%) - Two random trips to Walgreen's. One of those was to buy cortisone cream because the mosquito situation here is OUT OF CONTROL.
Bills ($133.33, 3.9%) - Home and car insurance.
Savings ($200, 5.8%) - The personal finance people out there are rolling their eyes at me.
Miscellaneous ($303.25, 8.8%) - Look, for boring reasons I took out a bunch of cash when I was in Michigan. I used this to pay for tips for flower deliveries, when we got our nails done, and for random coffees I got when I just needed something to get me through the day. I have not tracked this money and I still have some of it.
Travel ($376.12, 10.9%) - This was what I paid for a rental car when I went to Michigan.
Health ($381.63, 11%) - This is the bill for when I went to see the orthopedist about my leg and for some prescription toothpaste.
Groceries ($736.82, 21.3%) - Despite all of the chaos, we still HAVE TO EAT.
Pets ($1061, 30.6%) - Why so much, you say? Well, we boarded Hannah TWICE this month. Which is TWICE MORE than we have in literal years. We found a place in
northern Illinois that has separate kennels for each dog, so she didn't have to hang with other dogs. So $650 of this is just boarding for Hannah and the rest of it was the usual mess of food, probiotics for both of them, and Hannah getting a Seresto collar (that lasts for eight months).
****************
Outside of bills and food, what was your largest expense last month?
****************
If you are interested in voting for our next book for Cool Bloggers Book Club, don't forget to vote if you haven't already done so! The Google form is ready for you. Seriously, the vote is tight. The first place winner keeps swinging. Your vote matters!
****************
Been there with the pet spending! I'd love to find a friend who I could trust that would love to spend time with a sassy Shepherd, but until that day comes along the boarding fees are worth the peace of mind to know that Doggo is in a good situation when we're away.
ReplyDeleteI dunno who qualifies as a "personal finance person" but being able to save anything in a weird and spendy month always gets a round of applause from me.
I do have a friend who can watch Hannah! It's great! Until they're busy when we need a sitter. *sigh* I'm happy to have found a boarding place, even if it's sort of expensive.
DeleteIt is so unfair that the need to plan, prepare, and eat meals doesn’t pause when life is chaotic. $300 in cash for miscellaneous stuff sounds really really reasonable.
ReplyDeleteTell me more about the cat sitter please. Is this a person you know? Do you also pay them? Do they stay with Zelda while you are away or take her home or come visit her? If they visit, how often? What kind of gift does one get a cat sitter?
(This is Suzanne.)
SUZANNE!! After living here for seven years, I found out that my neighbor next door LOVES cats. She and her partner have dogs and it was in sheer desperation that I reached out to her to ask if she could just feed Zelda once a day.
DeleteSo she comes once a day for 20-30 minutes. She feeds her (we have an automatic feeder for her second feeder a day), changes her water and litter, and talks to her. LOL. That's what she said anyway. The first time I got her a $30 gift card, a shell from the Pacific Ocean, and some California chocolates. The second time I got her a candle from her hometown (it's near where my mom lived) and she refused to take additional payment.
If I could find a teen sitter, I would probably pay about $25 a day for this service, but my neighbor was too sweet and refused payment!
I'm pretty sure most personal finance people would say great job on managing to put something I to savings in a month a crazy, unexpected expenses.
ReplyDeleteOur biggest expense was bathroom renovations- my husband did most of the work. He hired a plumber to make cuts on scary pipes and then had him do a few other little things as he wanted to use the full hour he had to pay for. And the really spiffy new rainshower shower head with a hand help part as well. And the 17 extra trips to Menards for the things that cropped up.
Ugh! We need to do bathroom renos, but my husband is definitely NOT doing it himself. I'm so impressed that your husband has those skills!
DeleteOh lord, dog boarding is SO expensive. We did that only for a couple days earlier this month because we went to Calgary and couldn't take Rex, but he's going to the "country club" as they call it for three weeks and I am NOT looking forward to that expense. It's crazy! But I don't have a better option so $$$ it is. (Jake could technically look after him but he's currently working 11-12 hour days so that isn't a good option).
ReplyDeleteOh wait, I just realized we are talking about August. Well. Other than groceries...let's see...I guess my expenditures were gifts, theatre and dinner with the girls, replenishing my greeting card stash (I got that idea from you!), hepatitis A vaccine for me and Rob at the travel clinic, my annual substack subscriptions came up, omg I spent a lot of money. Also my Nutrafol, which I get delivered twice a year to save the shipping. That was pricey. Sheesh! What an expensive month!
Yes, the boarding here is expensive, too, but it does ease my mind that she doesn't have to be around other dogs. She's 50/50 on whether or not she wants to play with or kill other dogs and there's just no way to predict it.
DeleteYay for a greeting card stash! I just realized I was low on a couple types of cards, too, and had to replenish. That's fun to spend money on for me, though!
I agree with the other commenters- you DID put something into savings last month, so good job on that.
ReplyDeleteAugust seems like so far away, I can't even remember what I spent money on- but I probably didn't spend much since I traveled in July and was probably trying to reign it in. This month it will for sure be our enormous vet bill- which pales in comparison to your pet expenses! Wow, boarding is expensive. At least with cats we can just pay someone to come in once a day, and it does NOT cost hundreds of dollars! I'm going to point this out to my husband the next time he grumbles about out vet bill.
Yeah, August was far away. You can tell how much I did not want to run numbers on it, can't you?
DeleteCat vet bills are nothing compared to dog vet bills! Although Zelda has started to get a spendy as she's getting older.
Do you know how many millions of people don't put anything away in savings every month, even though they could? Don't be so hard on yourself.
ReplyDeleteAugust was not a very expensive month for us. September is going to hit us very, very, very hard. As in, I don't even want to talk about it hard. I basically stood there with the vault door open and ushered money right out, and the month is not even over yet.
Remember when we all wished we were grownups? Sigh.
I mean, I'm glad I'm an adult instead of a child. But I sort of wish I was an adult without any responsibilities. College was so fun! Now there's always something to worry about.
DeleteScrew the personal finance people and their judgment. You are saving. That is all that matters.
ReplyDeleteGosh, August feels like a long time ago! It was a lower spend month since we only had to pay for childcare for 2 weeks since the boys were at my parents for the 2nd half of the month. That reminds me that I need to send my parents a restaurant gift card as a thank you. Sheesh I am delayed in doing that but life has felt a little bit nutty lately between back to school, activities, and travel. All that said, childcare was still the largest expense even thought it was cut in half.
You are going to be living the life when the boys are both in school. Think of how much money you'll save! I guess you'll still have to figure out all the breaks and stuff. Hm. I'm going to be interested in how all that shakes out.
DeleteI’m impressed that you managed to put anything away as well, and agree with everyone else that future you is going to thank current you for being so consistent about it.
ReplyDeleteBiggest spend in August that was not groceries or bills…I think dinner with my friend. Usually we go Dutch (is that a slur, saying Dutch people are cheap? I’ve never considered that before…) but it was her birthday month. And the place we go is spendy. Worth every penny. As was lunch with you, which was much less spendy and also lovely and I know surreal. I’m still thinking about that observation tower at the museum and how I’ve been here for most of my life and never knew you could go up there at all, much less for free.
You know what? I just learned that you can climb all the way up to the state Capitol in Wisconsin and walk all the way around the building. It not nearly as tall as the observation tower, but it made me think about you and how you didn't know you could go up there! It's crazy what we don't know about where we live sometimes.
DeleteBig expenses in August. Hmmm. I think it was mostly groceries and regular stuff. We did a few road trips, so lots of money toward gas. But in October we have house taxes AND house insurance renewal (we pay in a lump sum because it costs less overall that way). So that will be a very spendy month.
ReplyDeletePS. Nance's comment made me laugh out loud. I'm picturing her actually standing in front of a door throwing money out. And YES, I remember wishing I was a grownup. #Overrated.
Does everyone think being a grownup is overrated? I mean, I'm SO MUCH HAPPIER as an adult. I need to really reexamine my life. LOL.
DeleteSpending money on pets is necessary, but also a big drain. It's one of those unavoidable situations if you are a good doggy mom. And you are.
ReplyDeleteOur biggest spend in August was buying potted mums to plant around the house. We change out some of the decorative pots, tossing the summer posies, putting in the fall ones. Mums, like everything else, are getting pricey.
Everything is so expensive. I wonder when we're going to have to start really cutting back, especially on groceries. I don't know if I'll be able to justify my Gatorade Zero habit for much longer.
DeleteI paid $300 for a cord of wood, but I thought I was only going to be paying $100. In my defense, this is the first time in my life I've ever had a wood stove, and my math skills suck. We easily could have gotten by with a lot less than that.
ReplyDeleteThe mosquitoes can hurry up and DIE already. I haven't been able to just hang out in my yard without going through a can of OFF! in months. And yet, the lightning bugs never stick around for long. That's just backward if you ask me.
THE MOSQUITOES ARE KILLING ME. I am COVERED. I HATE IT. I can't believe how bad they are. I'm going to start walking the dog in a full beekeeper suit.
DeleteOof. Pets are expensive, aren't they? I'd say our biggest expenses are bills and food. I think the other largest expense in August was the arrangement for my MIL's Celebration of Life (which Jon and I completely paid for. Don't ask.)
ReplyDeleteOof. My mom had already figured out stuff for her visitation, so we only paid for flowers. I hesitate to think about how much it would have cost otherwise. Sorry that you and Jon were on the hook for that - it's so hard to know what is the right thing to do.
DeleteNever getting over how expensive pets are. Wow.
ReplyDeletePets sound so expensive. My son lad has two dogs and he definitely never thought out how pricey it would be.
ReplyDeleteI am not on top of my finances like you are. Or like so many people are. Shh. Don’t tell my accountant dad. We are thrifty but busy. So we don’t eat out much and our source of entertainment is our kids’ sports. My guess is our biggest expense last month was hotels. Our anniversary. Drop off reg at college. And I took the older girls on an overnight to lake Geneva.
One of the reasons I have cats vs dogs is the whole expense of boarding them when I travel! It was always SO EXPENSIVE to board Dutch (especially near the end when he needed 1:1 care), and with my cat sitter, it's $17 a day for her to check in on the cats, feed them, and clean out their litter boxes. So affordable!!
ReplyDeleteI think my biggest expense in August was travel stuff! London is in a WEEK! AHHH!