In October of 2020, I started actually meaningfully tracking my spending — not a habit I’d managed to build consistently as an adult. But it stuck! And now, two years on, I’m still meticulously tracking everything I spend.
In March of 2022, Erik and I bought a house and merged finances, and I applied those skills to our joint finances. To build our budget, we basically took my budget and doubled it, as a starting point. Now that we’ve completed 2022, I’m looking back at our spending for that time, and setting the 2023 budget. We only have 9 months of data, not 12, but it’s better data than we had when we started!
Here are some lessons and takeaways:
- I was horrified by our average grocery spending! Mean of about $575/month, and $1,000 in December!! (I mean, it’s Christmas, so lots of expensive baking, dinners, etc, but still!) Almost $600/month seems like way too much for two people! But it turns out the USDA publishes monthly reports on the cost of food, and by that metric we’re doing fine. So maybe that’s just what groceries cost now?
- I set up a “gifts” bucket that was supposed to get $100 into it every month. Usually I moved that into another bucket and ended up with “0” for gifts. If I’d succeeded at my goal, we would’ve had Christmas covered! Instead we ended December at a slight spending deficit (which is somewhat different than “being in debt”).
- I dramatically under-budgeted for gas. I think I set a budget of $100/month. Literally the only month I met the budget was when Erik and I were out of the country for two weeks of the month. I consistently spent more like $150 – $180. This makes sense as all my budget data was from the pandemic.
- I need to do more granularity in the “House” category. House vs garden? House projects vs house wants? House vs garden vs Estate Sale buys? Because this is, right now, the single biggest bucket after “pay mortgage and utilities”, and I have very little visibility into where it’s going.
- In my personal spending, I pretty much spent money on paying down debt, clothes, and sewing stuff. My biggest individual expense was the Broadway season tickets at the Lied — no regrets!!
2023 should be the year that closes out my 3-year plan to be debt-free! Erik will have a bit of a consolidation loan left, but if I funnel my debt payoff $$ into that, it should be cleared up by the end of 2024. And, fingers crossed, Erik’s Student Loan Forgiveness should kick in before the end of 2023, as well. (If we are very lucky, he might even get forgiveness before the forbearance runs out!)
After that, I’ll need to pivot to a new set of financial goals. I’m at an age I should probably be doing more for retirement than 401k matching with my employer. I’d love to save for a couple awesome trips every year. There are a lot of items on the house project wish-list. And being debt-free (minus mortgage) will give us a lot of freedom to make those plans.
Notebook 