I try not to spend too much time on social media, but I’ve noticed a somewhat recent trend while scrolling with the “What I Spend in a Week” money breakdown. I’m obsessive about updating the budgeting app we use daily with all our purchases, but I know many people aren’t as dedicated to budgeting as I am. Which is fine! The goal of a budgeting challenge is to examine and evaluate and see if there’s room for improvement, and tracking your spending for a week can offer insights into surprising spending habits you didn’t know you had.
I’m a firm believer in the “practice what you preach” model, so I pulled our transactions from the past week to offer full transparency for the sake of education. I’ll share a little insider baseball as well about purchases I wanted to make but didn’t—and why.
Sunday
| Where | Category | Amount |
| Lucky’s Market | Dining Out | $6.22 |
| Amazon | Entertainment | $16.79 |
We headed for the trails Sunday for some free entertainment and fresh air before heading down to spend the afternoon with a friend playing card games. We stopped, and I grabbed lunch at a local grocery store in town, then I bought a book to support a writing friend. My husband ate before we left to save money, but I’d been wanting to check out this store for ages. Sadly, the grocery store didn’t live up to the hype, but the hiking sure did.
Monday
| Where | Category | Amount |
| Walmart | Furniture Sinking Fund | +$75.01 |
We had a scheduled pickup to return a cube organizer that I’d purchased but wouldn’t fit once I got its companion into the closet that operates as my reading nook/place to store my massive book collection.
Tuesday
| Where | Category | Amount |
| Sprouts | Groceries & Household | $22.64 |
| King Soopers | Groceries & Household | $213.75 |
We’ve been hyperaware of the cost-of-living differences as we settle into our new home state. We still aren’t sure how close our predications will be to reality. (But we’re keeping track and will let you know, because it’s a great learning experience for budgeting.)
We thought food was cheaper here than where we lived previously, so I got a loyalty card for the local supermarket chain, wanting to upgrade from being a Walmart person while saving us money.
Boy, was I wrong. My husband was glad I tagged along for the weekly grocery run, so that I got the sticker shock first hand. While we’re still replacing pantry staples we discarded to prevent liquids from exploding in a PODS full of our stuff, the week’s grocery run made me gag.
And I already know Sprouts is going to be expensive, but I get my sunflower butter there for my snowflake gut, and my husband splurged and got some bulk coffee beans on sale. Without coffee, he’s the guy from the McDonald’s commercial, so it’s worth the splurge. Plus, it’s still cheaper than him doing a coffee run every morning.
Wednesday
| Where | Category | Amount |
| Starbucks | Dining Out | Gift card |
| Target | Furniture Sinking Fund | +$29.20 |
| Family Member | Presents | $50.00 |
Speaking of coffee runs, I met up with a local writing friend after work for tea and coffee, but I used a gift card another friend gave me for my birthday, so it didn’t cost me anything. It was wonderful to soak in the spring air and catch up.
After our coffee date, I headed over to Target to return a mattress topper I bought, not realizing it was the same one we already had, just a different size. The picture did not look the same.
I sent out a birthday present for a family member as well.
Purchase avoided: I hate working out at the gym. I much prefer hiking where there’s a payoff of a killer view for all my exercising efforts. Yet one of my big goals with this move is to take back control of my health. To motivate myself, I go to the gym at the same time as my husband, giving me an accountability buddy to force me to go. (There is great power in accountability buddies, which is why we include them in our FIRE ladder.) I tried behavior coupling, something I learned from reading Atomic Habits. I let myself listen to my audiobook while I worked out. It wasn’t enough to channel my “I’m not even supposed to be here today” attitude, so I started blasting hard rock while the Stairmaster mastered me. One of my favorite bands, Smash Into Pieces, just dropped a new album, and I was so tempted to buy it as my “treat yoself” for working out. But the entertainment budget done run dry, so it had to wait until May. I listened to my old school Linkin Park instead. Then I bought the album, including a $3 digital credit, on May 1st before heading to the gym. It wasn’t a no forever, just a no in the moment.
Thursday
| Where | Category | Amount |
| Colorado DMV | Moving Sinking Fund | $83.69 |
| Amazon | Moving Sinking Fund | $14.40 |
We went to the DMV (always a great way to end a day) to update our registration, plate, and title for our car since we moved across state lines. This is something I completely forgot about when doing our moving budget and is a small motivator to not move to Wyoming in the future and have to do it all over again.
Colorado is a front and back license plates state, and we didn’t have a mount on the front of the car, as my husband found out while checking in the chilly rain. He had to run back inside like the ignorant Floridians we were and ask, “Uhhhh, so how does this work, then?”
We found an after market front license plate mounting kit on Amazon and bought it. I know I’ve talked about how you don’t need Amazon Prime to survive, and it’s completely true, but we did re-up for one month (at a discounted rate) while moving since my anxiety doesn’t do well with my house looking like it’s been smashed to pieces.
Friday
| Where | Category | Amount |
| Landlord | Rent, Storage Unit, Pest Control, Trash | $2,293.00 |
| City | Moving Sinking Fund | $22.00 |
| ENT practice | Medical | $44.86 |
One of the biggest budget busters of this move was forgetting we had to pay a month and a half’s worth of rent in the same month. I’d budgeted for the prorated half-month for moving in, but conveniently forgot that if I didn’t pay May rent before the 1st, it was going to be late.
Some mad budgeting shuffling happened on Friday.
I also had to pay the electric hook up fee (I got really excited for a minute when I thought $22 was our first electric bill. If only!) and a medical co-pay for an initial consult visit.
Purchases avoided: After work, we headed downtown to check out Main Street. There’s a local working co-op I’m considering joining, but I was already feeling the spending hangover from the $10,000+ we spent this month in moving expenses, so I’ve been putting off joining. I wanted to at least check it out. And the library had our copy of Twister ready for pickup. On the way home from our errands, we were driving with the windows down and caught a whiff from a BBQ joint we’ve been eyeballing since we moved in. We were both tempted to stop since it was near dinner time and we were hungry, but we didn’t have enough left in the dining out category for the month, and had pork chops to grill out, so we headed home.
Saturday
| Where | Category | Amount |
| WFWA | Entrepreneurship | $58.00 |
The previous week, I tried to get back into my writing rhythm. I’d gone to check in with my writing Facebook group only to discover I wasn’t in it anymore. It looked like they’d changed the way all their Facebook groups were working, so I assumed they’d deleted the old one and made a new one. I tried to rejoin and got an error that I wasn’t a member. Access denied.
In all the moving madness, I apparently forgot to renew my dues at the end of last year. Which benefited me, since I had no bandwidth for writing the past six months, but Saturday was the day to rejoin.
Purchase avoided: My writer friend and I talked about a recent writing conference Wednesday, so I looked up future upcoming events. The Rocky Mountains Writer’s Conference popped up on a list, and I remembered another writing friend mentioning she was planning on going. So I looked up registration. And about puked. It was $500! I kicked that can down the curb.
What I Spend in a Week Challenge Wrap Up
Over the course of the week, I spent $2,871.16. Granted, rent took up the bulk of that balance, but it’s still good to sit in that number, especially if I wasn’t used to bossing my budget around. Even now, I’ll admit the rent hurts. Our move was a conscious and detailed decision, and we had several budgeting and forecasting meetings while choosing where to live before we signed a lease. But sending out that much money at once—ouch. Before you say of course it hurts, renting is just throwing money away, we’ve covered this already in our Should I Rent or Buy A House article. Renting is definitely the right decision for us in this season of life. A mortgage would hurt just as hard.
Share Your What I Spend in a Week Budgeting Challenge
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