So it occurred to me, few weeks ago, that if instead of buying most of my groceries at Costco the first day or two of the month, I were to hold off on the Costco junket until the end of the thirty-day credit-card cycle, all the emergency bills that inevitably scotch up my budgeting efforts would have happened. Then, I would know exactly how much was left to stock in food.
This required me to live out of the freezer for a month. The billing cycle ends on the 20th, and by then the fridge, the freezer, and the cupboard were about bare.
However. By the 19th I knew I had exactly $206 left in the AMEX budget (all discretionary spending goes on the American Express card and is promptly paid off, because AMEX gives me a nice kickback at the end of the year). This should in theory be plenty to cover the big monthly Costco bill, though I’ve been known to spend as much as $240 there. So, to keep a grip on that, I created a grocery list, with space to enter prices:
At the store, I filled in the blanks with the cost of each item and then, when the cart was full, whipped out the calculator and added them up.
The S-corp was to pay for the paper, but I couldn’t lift a box into the cart. I’ll order that from Amazon.com; in any event, it wouldn’t have been counted into the budget. Unlike the upscale Costco outlet I’d visited about a month ago, the ghetto store near my house still had the lifetime supply of colored pens I need for editing, and so I grabbed a package there; that also will be covered by the little S-corporation.
All told, ta da!!!!! The bill only came to $178.42. Subtract the $12.50 for the S-corp’s pens and the hit against the budget was only $166. At Target, I picked up the desperately needed tennis balls for the dog, who has loved her current set to death, adding a mere $3 to the tab. The rest of the errands were opted.
A-n-n-d…YES! This month’s discretionary expenditures came in right on target!
Lookit that! Gasoline was almost $135 this month. And that was after I’d planned every single trip carefully…there were no wasted side trips, no idle drives around the city. I didn’t drive anywhere (except to evening choir practice) without combining errands, and I took care to use hypermiling techniques to save gas. That is just beyond the pale.
I tried to keep the fillups to two, but three times I ran so low on gas I had to stop at expensive gas stations so that I could make it to a Costco. Just now the car is almost full, and since I won’t have to drive to campus again until July 5, I may not have to get another fillup during the May/June budget cycle.
In July, though, it’s going to be tough: classes meet four days a week. That’s twice the number of trips I’ve had to make this spring; presumably gas costs will rise to around $200. And that IS beyond the pale!
Fortunately, I’ve funded most of this year’s mortgage self-escrow, and so I can use all my summer earnings to live on. That’ll be refreshing.
I was stunned at the prices in Target, BTW. No food bargains in that place! Beef that’s on sale for $1.79 a pound at Safeway is going for over five bucks at Target. A container of whipping cream cost what I paid for it at AJ’s, a gourmet retailer in the Whole Foods category. Grabbed the tennis balls and ran, figuring the next day I’d head over to Safeway for the dog’s hamburger.
But back to the point: Delaying the shopping trip for a month’s worth of household and food supplies until after other costs had come in worked to keep me on budget this month. Because I knew exactly how much was left in the budget, I was able to fit buying to the budget. Had the bottom line gone over the $206 left to spend, I would have started putting back items I didn’t really need, starting with the whiskey and wine, and Cassie would have had to make do with her old, busted tennis balls.
She won’t let me throw the damn things away, anyhow. Every time I slip a raggedy old ball into a trash basket, she sniffs it out and then barks at the trash basket until I retrieve it.
The dog’s more frugal than I am!
