so... how did the month go?

It's the 30th, it's Saturday, and it's time to face the music. I know I have a bit of shopping to do today, but our accounts should be more or less at their limits for the month, so I'm sitting down with my mint.com account and taking a good look at how we spent this month. Did we meet the budget? Umm... no. We had a lot of expenses I hadn't budgeted for, including medical bills and twice as much gas as I thought we'd use. Looks like I'll be tweaking numbers for next month for sure.

But, most importantly, how'd we do on the food budget?

$762 groceries (includes health & beauty, household cleaners, toiletries, etc)

$5.67 Starbucks (hmm... apparently Tom snuck in a visit when I wasn't looking!)

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October's grand total: $767.67

I'd budgeted $600 for the month for food, including $50 a couple of meals out (with kids eating free of course). THAT didn't happen, but probably since I was looking it as "$150 a week" not realizing that the month was 5 weeks, not 4. But let's look at last month's food and grocery spending, shall we? Hold on to your seats... this is going to blow your mind.

$849 groceries (MORE than this month- and yet we still ate out. a lot. you'll see.)

$615 restaurants hooooooo-lee. But wait.

$288 fast food not restaurants! Different!

$49 alcohol & bars mmhmm.

$31 coffee shops I love coffee. No lie.

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September's grand total: $1832 Please excuse me for a moment. I need to go have a heart attack.

OK. I'm back.

Ready for the final number of "savings"? And really it's the final number of "money that we spent that we never had in the first place, thus digging ourselves into a hole that will take us months to get out of".

$1832 - $767.67= $1064.33 "saved" on food this month.

I'll say it again... it's not like we have that much to throw in the bank. It's money we were spending that we didn't have in the first place. But that's $1k less that we're in the hole this month. I am so proud. I asked Tom if he felt like we'd missed out on $1,000 worth of food by me cooking all our meals, and he laughed. "$100, maybe. Not $1,000."

Today shall be known as pat-myself-on-the-back day. I doubt we'll ever have another month with such a big difference in money going out. It looks great on paper, and it feels awesome.