This post was supposed to go up last Friday, but instead I went out on Thursday night instead of writing it. July was a more expensive month than I planned it to be, I started out the month saying I wanted to do a no-buy, or at least a low-buy and I really did not do that. Or anything close to that. I don’t really know how I managed to go so badly off the rails, but I did.
As you can see my food and shopping spending was nearly as much as my rent, which is not good. I really need to bring it down in August. I don’t have that many things I need to get in August, and I’m not starting to shop for fall/winter stuff until September (when I’m going home, and I will do some shopping while I’m home and near a city). Speaking of, I bought my flight home on July 31, so it got charged to my card then, so it’s a future investment I guess.
The big area was food/coffee and such. I spent almost $850 on groceries, and it’s not that I went to the grocery store and dropped a couple hundred bucks each week, it’s $50 here and there. So I really want to work on meal planning and sticking to the meal plan completely. Basically, only going to the grocery store once a week and getting everything I need then and not going back.
The next area is coffee, I spent nearly $90 on coffee, I really want to get back to only buying coffee on Friday afternoons. The problem with life generally being more open, not in lockdown, back in the office, and more social is you generally do spend more money. I also got coffee out more than once during my birthday week, which I am fine with.
My cell phone bill was also higher than normal, it is normally about $90, but my June bill (which I pay in July) was $124, the extra cost was from my days in the USA in June, $10 per day with unlimited access to my normal phone plan.
Some car stuff was also more expensive than anticipated, I finally got my winter tires taken off and switched to my all-seasons and it was about $150, and gas is also very expensive at the moment, so I spent $178 on gas. Overall, just annoying stuff.
Then I got influenced and I bought a pretty big Skims order. I mean it is all good, but I should not have spent $300 on it. But I do really like the bras I got, they are super comfortable, and decent support for wire-free bras (although Ms. Kim is definitely a fan of a little boob bounce). But I do finally understand what the phrase buttery soft means. I also bought a pair of rollerskates, they have started to do roller skating at the hockey rink on Wednesday nights, it is really really fun (and I’m hoping that it will mean that I am actually capable of ice skating this winter).
I am starting to get a bit worried that I have fallen victim to lifestyle creep, I think I allowed myself to get comfortable having a lot more income earlier this year when I was doing back-to-back big work trips and pet sitting and now I’m having trouble re-adapting to being a bit more frugal.
My next post will be my what I’m buying in August, potentially also today, or maybe tomorrow, but one day this week will hopefully have a double post to get my “editorial calendar” (lol who am I?) back on track.
Laura
Thoughtful Millennial 