NWR: Weekly Spending Money/Budgeting Q

[Deleted User] · May 2011

Question for you ladies - for those of you who work on saving money, or saving a certain amount each week/month etc - How much do you budget for spending money?

Also, what do you spend on groceries and how many people are in your household?

H & I are trying to come up with a "plan" to try and follow as a guideline, because right now I just spend/buy whatever I want... which I know isn't good

We're by no means in debt and we have money in savings, but we want to continue to build that and I am just curious what are reasonable amounts to try and go by.

MAYA3300 · May 2011

A good place for you and hubby to start is to track your spending for a couple of months. Once you have a better idea of what your expenses are, you can create a budget. The budget will be more realistic because it's based off your spending habits versus random numbers. And once you have an idea of your expenses, you can see where you need to trim or reduce your expenses and go from there.

tpender13 · May 2011

PPs idea is good. I like the idea of each person keeping a certain percentage or $ amount from each paycheck as fun money, then putting the the rest into joint accounts for paying bills and savings.

[Deleted User] · May 2011

Maya, Thank you for your response... that's not really what I'm asking though.

I'm trying to give myself a 'personal allowance' so to speak to try and stick to each week, and I am curious if anyone else does this and if so, what a reasonable amount is for them.

[Deleted User] · May 2011

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_minnesota-minneapolis-st-paul_nwr-weekly-spending-moneybudgeting-q?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local%20Wedding%20BoardsForum:81Discussion:2e7b741e-ff63-4c6f-8167-90475d04d0a5Post:6eafca8a-6077-40f9-b121-48ef6618a860">Re: NWR: Weekly Spending Money/Budgeting Q</a>:
[QUOTE]PPs idea is good. I like the idea of each person keeping a certain percentage or $ amount from each paycheck as fun money, then putting the the rest into joint accounts for paying bills and savings.
Posted by tpender13[/QUOTE]

This exactly... :) soooo I'm trying to find a good dollar amount each week for fun money and wondering if anyone else does this and if so, how much they alot for this themselves. ;) I haven't really put myself on any kind of budget in several years so I don't know what a realistic amount is.

MAYA3300 · May 2011

Household size = 2
We're on a very tight budget though....
Groceries (doesn't include eating out) = $160/month
Misc (personal and household expenses) = $160/month
Entertainment & dining out = $100
Clothes = $150/year

So my "fun" money (entertainment + clothes) totals $112 a month. LOL.

Hubby doesn't track his spending so the figures I gave you are straight from my monthly budget. I do all the grocery shopping and buy all the necessities to maintain a household

MarcyLT · May 2011

We budget $500 each per month in "fun money" - in our personal accounts that we can use for anything we want. Some months, I blow through it easily - manicures, waxes, clothes, etc. Other months, I barely touch it and it carries over to the next month. But it's nice to know it's budgeted so if I want a crazily expensive dress or something, I can buy it without guilt.

On the grocery question, our budget is $500 a month - I order our groceries through an online delivery service and I try to order every week to 10 days and stay inthe $125-150 range.

[Deleted User] · May 2011

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_minnesota-minneapolis-st-paul_nwr-weekly-spending-moneybudgeting-q?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local%20Wedding%20BoardsForum:81Discussion:2e7b741e-ff63-4c6f-8167-90475d04d0a5Post:8cb9fce0-7f7c-453c-a891-1d8442086b94">Re: NWR: Weekly Spending Money/Budgeting Q</a>:
[QUOTE]We budget $500 each per month in "fun money" - in our personal accounts that we can use for anything we want. Some months, I blow through it easily - manicures, waxes, clothes, etc. Other months, I barely touch it and it carries over to the next month. But it's nice to know it's budgeted so if I want a crazily expensive dress or something, I can buy it without guilt. On the grocery question, our budget is $500 a month - I order our groceries through an online delivery service and I try to order every week to 10 days and stay inthe $125-150 range.
Posted by MarcyLT[/QUOTE]

Wow good to know that someone else spends that much on groceries. I spend about that - I don't have them delivered but I do shop at Whole Foods and Co-Ops and I buy mostly organic & natural foods... which are more expensive. Hubby thinks it's too much for a family of 3 ;)

I Want Cake · May 2011

The way we do it is we each put $500 in our joint account from every paycheck. We use that to pay the mortgage, utilities, and all of our joint bills.

For myself, I allow $100/week in spending cash, which includes keeping gas in my car. I've been doing it that way for many years, and it's been a pretty good amount to work with, although I make way more now than I did when I first started that budget, and my bills are vastly different and less, since I don't live alone anymore. It gives me money to go out for lunch pretty much daily, as long as it isn't too expensive, and a little extra for personal necessities. I actually have quite a bit extra after I factor out those $200/paycheck, so I use that for my own personal expenses, like clothing, gifts, car repairs, shopping trips and whatnot.

I wish I could tell you how much we spend on groceries every month. The average trip for us is about $200, but I doubt we make even one big trip every month. We stop all the time and pick up odds and ends, and I usually use my personal account to pay for it, so it's hard to keep track. We also eat out quite a bit. I'm horrible at budgeting, but H is really good at it. I don't spend money I don't have, but I'm not exactly a big saver, either.

[Deleted User] · May 2011

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_minnesota-minneapolis-st-paul_nwr-weekly-spending-moneybudgeting-q?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local%20Wedding%20BoardsForum:81Discussion:2e7b741e-ff63-4c6f-8167-90475d04d0a5Post:8a6b965d-6ee4-41f8-b220-9e34bb37532e">Re: NWR: Weekly Spending Money/Budgeting Q</a>:
[QUOTE]The way we do it is we each put $500 in our joint account from every paycheck. We use that to pay the mortgage, utilities, and all of our joint bills. For myself, I allow $100/week in spending cash, which includes keeping gas in my car. I've been doing it that way for many years, and it's been a pretty good amount to work with, although I make way more now than I did when I first started that budget, and my bills are vastly different and less, since I don't live alone anymore. It gives me money to go out for lunch pretty much daily, as long as it isn't too expensive, and a little extra for personal necessities. I actually have quite a bit extra after I factor out those $200/paycheck, so I use that for my own personal expenses, like clothing, gifts, car repairs, shopping trips and whatnot. I wish I could tell you how much we spend on groceries every month. The average trip for us is about $200, but I doubt we make even one big trip every month. We stop all the time and pick up odds and ends, and I usually use my personal account to pay for it, so it's hard to keep track. We also eat out quite a bit. I'm horrible at budgeting, but H is really good at it. I don't spend money I don't have, but I'm not exactly a big saver, either.
Posted by I Want Cake[/QUOTE]

This is totally me too.

It's interesting to hear what other people allow for spending and such... it helps! I am thinking toward $60/week (not including gas, but including parking - which would motivate me to bus more/drive to work less) and then using our joint account for gas & groceries... I just have to figure out that budget now ;)

Steph0871 · May 2011

I do about 10% of my check (I get paid every other week.) H also does about 10%; it ends up being that he gets more fun money, but I think that's fair since he makes more. In relation, he also contributes more toward the joint expenes.

EmilyCMN · May 2011

Right now for a house of 2 we are doing about $200 every 2-3 weeks in groceries. And we each put in 55% of our check into a joint/house account. After we get married we are going to change that percentage to probably more of a 90% level so we each have some money that you can use without asking permission... I am not as big of a fan of that method because it is another thing to keep track of. I feel the better plan is to establish spending levels that are ok to spend without asking permission. But we'll see. I would say my main expense is gas b/c I have a really long commute. Other than that I think I maybe spend a couple hundred a month on fun stuff (lunches out, clothes and spa time...). I hope that helps. I guess you need to decide what you want to spend money on and see how much that will cost to do each month.

maybe984 · May 2011

I usually spend about $100 per week on "me" stuff like gas, lunches during the work day (I'm really bad about not packing a lunch!), and other random stuff. I could probably get that down to $60, but I'm lazy ;-)

These days, groceries are getting hella expensive. DH and I used to spend about $300 a month, tops... and now we're spending close to $500 just for the two of us. Some of it is due to the fact that we eat healthier stuff than we used to, but a lot of it's just the economy.

I would tooootally recommend signing up for mint.com. You can set it up to track all of your bank accounts and keep track of your budgets for you. That way, you can try setting a budget of $60, but if you end up continuously going over, you can look at your spending history and figure out what a more reasonable budget for you would be.

NWR: Weekly Spending Money/Budgeting Q

Re: NWR: Weekly Spending Money/Budgeting Q

Choose Another Board

Search Boards