Tracking our spending assiduously, including my own personal allowance spending, continues to be so satisfying. I’m finding it easy in some ways to stick (pretty much) to my budget of $100 of personal allowance spending per month, but hard in other ways.
There are SO! MANY! things I want to buy during the month. By sharing my purchases at the end of the month I might make it look easy to stick to a personal allowance budget but please know that it is not without plenty of restraint!
I’ve noticed that I’m especially bombarded with “wants” scrolling through Instagram or Pinterest. No surprise but it does leave me thinking of ways to avoid triggering a “buy” impulse. I’ve shared my method of snapping a photo instead of making a purchase when I’m in a store. I now have collections on my phone for DECOR, CLOTHES, and PLANTS. Those seem to be the things where I’m most tempted to spend money. That helps but wanting to spend up to and beyond my monthly budget remains something I have to actively fight. I’ve started unsubscribing to brand Instagram feeds for that reason. Instead, I’ll try to save a photo to Pinterest of something I like from the brand and then unsubscribe from the feed.
What all this makes me thing of is how incredibly, and perhaps grossly, privileged I am. On the one hand I can fret that there are so many things that others have that I “can’t have.” On the other hand, I can think of how rich you have to be to have a budget of $100 per month to spend on whatever you want. I recognize how luxurious this is. But then when you surround yourself with others living the same luxurious life it’s alarming how easy it is to feel that I don’t have enough.
I try to practice gratitude regularly for all that I have, to get perspective on how wealthy we are and to look for fulfillment outside of material possessions. But I do want to be honest that there are plenty of things I’d love to buy and often wish that I could.
What I spent in April:
$10.88 – vintage Girl Scout Handbook found while antiquing. I love finding old books on topics dear to me. I was a Girl Scout until my junior year in high school and have fond memories of earning badges and camping in the woods. I’m still friend with many of the girls from Troop 1039.
$16.71 – embroidery supplies to work on the embroidery pattern that I purchased in March. I started the project in Austin and spent a few hours over the week stitching on my parents beautiful screened-in back porch and looking at the Texas oak trees.
$3.99 – coffee at Starbucks for myself and one of Dash’s preschool teachers. She mentioned she hadn’t had time to have coffee that day and I said that no one who teaches preschoolers should be without coffee.
$12.62 – breakfast at the airport on my way to Austin.
$18.78 – breakfast tacos and coffee with a dear girl friend while home in Austin, my treat. We arrived for breakfast and stayed until they were starting to bring out fajitas for the lunch crowd around us.
$5.41 – coffee + cookie treat during a work day which felt so luxurious. Technically I could not include this in my monthly spending because my dad always likes to slip me a $20 when I’m home so I used “dad dollar” cash. But to be conservative I’m counting it against my monthly spending.
$15.00 – mascara x 2 (because I’m trying to change my mascara more frequently instead of using the same one for more than a year) and cuticle clippers.
$31.68 – dinner at Postino to celebrate a girl friend’s birthday. The best bruschetta.
$2.11 – again with the Starbucks! Small cup of coffee. In my defense, a colleague asked me to connect with someone they know for a networking/informational interview.
Total spent: $117.18 out of $100 budgeted.
In March $101.35 out of $100 budgeted
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