We tried to live within a budget, but we can't

[Amethyst]

All you'd need to do is dine often at expensive restaurants, order their best wines, and treat friends. I'll bet it would not be hard to get up to $60K/year that way.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunset You Win Ours is 1/10th that number. If I was wild I could double possibly triple ours to $18K , but it would be hard. Feel free to provide instructions in the BTD thread, I might learn something

[Closet_Gamer]

For the OP:

Sounds like clothes are your partner's hobby. Perhaps encourage a second part to the hobby where she sells them on the Internet.

My brother has a car hobby. His wife tried to institute a "car-in = car-out" policy...but it never stuck.


More generally:

What a hilarious thread! Money, stories, judgement, angst, accusations, malfunctioning closets...its all in here! "Days of our FIRE Lives"

My personal favorite sub-thread is the "I'm a 50 year single dude who lives in gym shorts and has holes in my underwear. How does anyone spend lots of money on clothes?"

My bathroom is a cautionary tale. I have one bottle of green shampoo and a bar of soap. DW has no less than 10 bottles of something or other and three kinds of a scrubs.

Women are different.
Vive la difference.

[finnski1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gumby Oddly enough, even though I always have tracked and probably always will continue to track our spending to the penny -- I can tell you precisely what we spent every month on about 57 different categories over the past 20 years or so -- we do not have a budget. While I have become very adept at predicting how much we will spend on each category, we actually spend what we want, when we want and how we want. And, based on my knowledge of what we actually spend, rather than what we we "budget" or feel we should spend, I am confident we will never run out of money.

This is exactly how I operate as well. I am very precise in recording our spending on everything but at the end of the day I don't have a budget at all. I guess I just like spreadsheets.

[brett]

Complete opposite.

We do not have a budget.

I keep track of after tax spending only to understand how much we need to draw down over and above our pension incomes or how much we need to transfer to our HISA.

That takes all of five minutes a month. I take a tape from our check account. Often less than five minutes because so much goes through our credit card(s) or pre-authorizations.
Add any periodic tax instalment payments and we are finished.

Do not care what we spend on books, beans, gas, airfare, or anything else. We only care about the bottom right hand number.

[RetiredHappy]

We have lunch at the club almost everyday and we always leave extra tips. On average we eat one dinner out a week, always at a very nice restaurant. My husband does alcohol and I don't.

We try to only buy organic produce, wild caught seafood and USDA prime grade beef. We also entertain frequently at our home.

When we travel on land, we almost always have both lunch and dinner out even though we typically book a 2BR/2BA timeshare (Marriott and Westin) with kitchen and invite friends to join us. Some of our friends have even more expensive taste than us.

[ivinsfan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RetiredHappy We have lunch at the club almost everyday and we always leave extra tips. On average we eat one dinner out a week, always at a very nice restaurant. My husband does alcohol and I don't. We try to only buy organic produce, wild caught seafood and USDA prime grade beef. We also entertain frequently at our home. When we travel on land, we almost always have both lunch and dinner out even though we typically book a 2BR/2BA timeshare (Marriott and Westin) with kitchen and invite friends to join us. Some of our friends have even more expensive taste than us.

So 60K...lunch for 2 6 to 7 days a week..dinner for 2 once a week.. 1 drinker one non drinker. Even with organic food how does that total 60K a year?


This goes to show having a "food" budget means different things to different people.



To me food budget is basically food bought and prepared to eat at home.


Eating out and entertaining would merit two separate line items.



It sounds like lots of your socializing and enjoyment are connected to food. Party on and good on you for enjoying yourselves.

[RetiredHappy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ivinsfan So 60K...lunch for 2 6 to 7 days a week..dinner for 2 once a week.. 1 drinker one non drinker. Even with organic food how does that total 60K a week? This goes to show having a "food" budget means different things to different people. To me food budget is basically food bought and prepared to eat at home. Eating out and entertaining would merit two separate line items. It sounds like lots of your socializing and enjoyment are connected to food. Party on and good on you for enjoying yourselves.

60K a year, not 60K a week. Nothing to get huffy about. We all decide how we live and spend our money.

[braumeister]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ivinsfan To me food budget is basically food bought and prepared to eat at home. Eating out and entertaining would merit two separate line items.

You would hate looking at my spreadsheet.

I have just seven categories, and one of them is "Cash/Ent/Food".

• Cash means what I get from ATMs and spend on whatever (the whatever is not accounted for).
• Ent means all entertainment (tickets, etc.)
• Food means anything bought at the supermarket plus whatever is spent in restaurants.

I actually keep very close track of all our spending (within my seven categories) and I always marvel at how others break their spending down into what I would consider sub-sub-sub-sub-categories.

My point is that it doesn't really matter, as long as you know, to your own satisfaction, where your money is going.

[ivinsfan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RetiredHappy 60K a year, not 60K a week. Nothing to get huffy about. We all decide how we live and spend our money.

That would be a lot..no one is huffy..just saying food means different things to different people

Curious how you got huffy from my post

[ivinsfan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by braumeister You would hate looking at my spreadsheet. I have just seven categories, and one of them is "Cash/Ent/Food". Cash means what I get from ATMs and spend on whatever (the whatever is not accounted for). Ent means all entertainment (tickets, etc.) Food means anything bought at the supermarket plus whatever is spent in restaurants. I actually keep very close track of all our spending (within my seven categories) and I always marvel at how others break their spending down into what I would consider sub-sub-sub-sub-categories. My point is that it doesn't really matter, as long as you know, to your own satisfaction, where your money is going.

Some people break out the cost of TP..

[Dtail]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ivinsfan Some people break out the cost of TP..

17 categories for me, but not TP. Some on this site clearly use more categories.

[braumeister]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dtail 17 categories for me, but not TP. Some on this site clearly use more categories.

What, you make your own?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnPxhSXzkwY

[Teacher Terry]

I separate groceries from eating out also.

[Dtail]

Quote:

Originally Posted by braumeister What, you make your own? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnPxhSXzkwY

Hey, could have made some monies last year if I made my own.

[LarryMelman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by braumeister Cash means what I get from ATMs and spend on whatever (the whatever is not accounted for). Ent means all entertainment (tickets, etc.) Food means anything bought at the supermarket plus whatever is spent in restaurants.

My categories go back to the 1980's. "Groceries" includes everything at the grocery store. Food and TP and the National Enquirer. However if I buy TP at Wal-mart, it probably gets categorized as "Misc". As opposed to weed-killer at Walmart which I'd probably spilt out as "House & Yard Stuff". A meal just for myself at McDonald's also goes under "Groceries". Unless I'm out with a group, then I'll put it as "Dining" which I split off from "Groceries" a few years back to encourage myself to do more actual dining out. I spend almost no "cash" any more but when I do, I break it into the various categories.

Clear as mud, right? Well it makes sense to me.

However I still can't wrap my brain around $60K/year of food-related expense.

[NW-Bound]

I don't break out groceries, TP, household products, alcohol, because the items are all paid on a single ticket. Too much hassle.

Restaurant receipts stand out from Costco or Safeway receipts, hence I can have them in a separate category. Similarly, separating out electric and water bills at each of my two homes takes no work, because they are billed separately and Quicken does the classification for me. Same with home insurance and car insurance. Basically, if the classification comes free due to the separate recurrent billing, I make use of it.

By using Quicken to track my expenses, all these category classifications come without me having to do much work, beyond just click on "Download all accounts", then go in and correct some mislabeling by Quicken. And I do want to check on all my accounts anyway, in order to spot fraudulent activities.

I started to track total expenses ever since I seriously thought about ER, and that was about 3 years prior to pulling the trigger. I will continue to do this, even though I currently underspend by a 6-figure number what FIRECalc says I can.

[tb001]

Huh. I’ve always bundled eating out in with groceries. When I break out family dinners out and our date nights, our monthly food budget is about 1300 for four of us. This includes alcohol and paper products and any other random Costco purchases. Still higher than many here, but I’m assuming several of these are solo or couples.

[Sunset]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Teacher Terry I separate groceries from eating out also.

I separate out:

• Groceries,
• Restaurant,
• TakeOut food
• Booze

The split out is simply because I want to know how much takeout I do, this was prior to Covid.
Booze is separate as I wanted to know how much I drink, DW doesn't. Turns out it's less than I thought



I have a total of 36 Categories, next year it will be 34 as I tracked how much money I gave 2 people, but they have both died this year.

[Teacher Terry]

It makes sense to me that the 2 items are separate because groceries are necessary and eating out is discretionary.

[ivinsfan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Teacher Terry It makes sense to me that the 2 items are separate because groceries are necessary and eating out is discretionary.

Not to everyone..but I'm with you.