This post marks one year of sharing how I spent my personal allowance budget each month. For the most part, I find openly sharing our finances here and on Matrimoney really helpful. It keeps me/us accountable and I hear from readers and listeners that it's really helpful. But it's also a little bit scary sometimes!... Read more →

Just as I expected, once Halloween hit time suddenly went into warp speed! But I didn't want to miss sharing how I spent my personal allowance in the past two months. This has been such a helpful exercise this year and I'm looking forward to continuing next year. A couple people have requested that I also share how Chris and I spend our joint allowance each month, for which we budget $150 - although I think we aren't as good about sticking to that. One date night + babysitter pretty much takes it all. Next week we'll have our annual... Read more →

Tracking our spending has many benefits. It keeps us accountable and also shines light on tricker budgeting categories, like travel spending and home decor spending. Read more →

My spending this month offers an occasion to talk about an important budgeting topic: what happens when we don't stick to a budget. Because that definitely happened this month. Read more →

My spending in July was awesome. Although I think this is partly because in July we had a 10 day trip to Austin and when we travel we lump everything into "travel" expenses. Read more →

Each month, Chris and I budget $100 each to spend as "personal allowance." This includes eating out/coffee/activities we do separately (we have a joint family allowance budget of $100 as well) and purchases are that wants and not needs. To keep ourselves accountable, we use Mint to monitor our spending. As an extra layer of accountability I am sharing what I spent my personal allowance on each month and whether I stayed within budget. Buying my next Get To Work Book planner this month took up the bulk of my spending this month. But it was an expense I was... Read more →

Each month, Chris and I budget $100 each to spend as "personal allowance." This includes eating out/coffee/activities we do separately (we have a joint family allowance budget of $100 as well) and purchases are that wants and not needs. To keep ourselves accountable, we use Mint to monitor our spending. As an extra layer of accountability I am sharing what I spent my personal allowance on each month and whether I stayed within budget. This is my fifth month of diligently tracking my spending and being transparent about it. And it feels great! Already this year we have reduced our... Read more →

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... Read more →

Although I'm a little behind on this update, staying accountable is helping me to stick to my monthly personal allowance budget. So, here's what I spent in March: $6.46 - Trolls soundtrack for the boys. Sadly, they weren't as into this as I had hoped so it didn't feel like money well spent. $9.65 - Treated a visiting friend to lunch at Uprooted Kitchen with the help of a gift card. $17.05 - Girls' night out with friends. Although I'm frustrated with myself because I realized after we had left that I was over-charged by about $5. I meant to... Read more →

Each month, Chris and I budget $100 each to spend as "personal allowance." This includes eating out/coffee/activities we do separately (we have a joint family allowance budget of $150 as well) and purchases that are that wants and not needs. To keep ourselves accountable, we use Mint to monitor our spending. As an extra layer of accountability, I am sharing what I spent my personal allowance on each month and whether I stayed within budget. Check out previous months here. After Chris and I both did a great job in January of staying within our personal allowance budgets we decreased... Read more →