Reevaluating Weekly Expenses
So after tracking expenses for a couple weeks, I've decided to adjust slightly how I'm spending my money. Originally, it looked like this:
Phone: $2 per week
Rent + Internet: $280 per week
Electricity: $15 per week
Gym: $15.95 per week
Domain: $0.25 per week
Hosting: $1.95 per week
Groceries: $75 per week
Cheat meal: $25 per week
Coffee: $35 per week
Misc household items: $25 per week
Gifts: $5.85 per week
Clothing: $15 per week
Emergency: $20 per week
Social: $50 per week
Total: $550
Couple things I want to change about this. Phone, rent, electricity, gym, hosting will all remain the same. Domain costs, I want to increase slightly because I own
www.chatphilosophy.net that I feel has some value and @ $11 a year to renew, could be a good thing to hang onto for the time being.
So "domain" costs are up to $0.46 per week now. I also want to add a "books" allocation because as I mentioned earlier, I want to spend more of my free time reading.
I'll only put $7 per week into this which should get me one book per month. Groceries also needs to change. ATM I think I can get by on $25 a week for groceries because most of my food is payed for by homegames. The only other food I need each week is oatmeal, milk, Greek yoghurt, and bananas.
So we'll reduce the groceries allocation to $25. Cheat meal, well, I really really value the ability to stroll down to a cafe and get breakfast/brunch. I'd like to be able to do this more than just once a week, so I'll allow for two of these 'cheat meals' - BTW this isn't a dietary cheat, I have no set diet. The reason they're cheat meals is because they're expensive and in a way I'm cheating my finances. It's currently at $25, which is silly because coffee is a separate criterion meaning
if I make this $40, that should allow me two decent meals out per week. It's the small things in life right!?
Coffee, we'll reduce to $30 a week I think. This is because I'll skip the coffee when I play homegames and have them make me a coffee instead. So coffees are really just for casino sessions now.
Misc household items, honestly, I don't see that number ever really getting up near $25. Like even if I got everything I need in a week, I think it'd be less. So let's reduce that number to $20. Gifts, I think can stay at $5.85 - it's my sister's birthday next week and I really should get her something. But after that, there won't be any gift purchasing til Christmas! Thank fk. Clothing @ $15 a week I feel is prrrooooobably still fine... I have a house party coming up and I'll probably need to buy some **** for the theme for that. Might want to up this one to $20 at some later stage, just so I can buy some more "poker attire" because I feel like I wear mostly the same **** to each game each week. But I don't really care, so will keep it at $15 for now. Emergency can stay at $20. And then there's the social fund. With the current changes, our weekly expenses are totaling $521.21, which is a decent saving from $550. For the time being, I don't think we need to reduce total expenses, so it's more about shifting them around and relieving pressure in certain areas, like cheat meals and social funds.
What I'll do is increase the social fund by $21.79 to get us back to that $550 number. This effectively gives us another $20 per week to enjoy socialising on our night's off. Remembering of course, this $70 social fund, if not spent in any week rolls over til the following week. I didn't go out this past week so that means I can "save" this money for the big forthcoming houseparty nights next month.
Revised Expenses:
Phone: $2 per week
Rent + Internet: $280 per week
Electricity: $15 per week
Gym: $15.95 per week
Domain: $0.46 per week
Hosting: $1.95 per week
Groceries: $25 per week
Cheat meal: $40 per week
Coffee: $30 per week
Misc household items: $20 per week
Gifts: $5.85 per week
Clothing: $15 per week
Emergency: $20 per week
Books: $7 per week
Social: $71.79 per week
Total: $550
So with these changes, I should be able to enjoy an extra meal out on my day(s) off each week as well as have less pressure when I go out and party as to what I can spend. This should help me stay on budget nicely.
Will continue tracking expenses each week and will post brief recaps here to keep myself accountable. This week it's currently Sunday night and I've spent a total of $7.61 since Friday - so expenses are actually right down. Mostly thanks to the homegames paying for the majority of the food I eat each week. The other thing I definitely have benefited from is the fasting. I'm not trying to hit any macro targets and don't have any set eating windows as such, but just getting up in the morning (arvo) and training before I eat puts my metabolism into a really good place.
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Anyway, it's about 8:30pm on Sunday evening now. I've got breakfast with the fam at 9:30am tomorrow. Tonight I'm going to swing by one of the pubs and catch up with a friend from my old job before heading to the casino. I'll look to play maybe 3-5 hours there before coming home and relaxing - probably netflix for a bit, doubt I'll be that tired. Hopefully will get a few hours sleep before having to get up for brekky.
GL to all those on the grind today!