What my budget looks like
Happy budgeting time 💸 I’ve talked a little about things I try to not buy anymore in respect to budgeting. I feel like I’ve been failing that lately with so many purchases though.
Anyway, I live in a high COL – cost of living – area, Denver. With things going up all over, here are how I keep track of expenses and what they look like for us. We are a two income, no kids household. Because we both work we don’t stress on groceries cost and we do eat out about 10x or less a month. We try to not eat out that often, sushi and poke is the main culprit for us.
My basic bills
I keep track of my budget in Sheets, using simple math formulas. I work full time, with this stuff being my expensive ass hobby for fun, and fortunately love my job. Our basic expenses are:
Rent
Food
Gas
Debt (credit cards)
Insurance(s)
For me, debt is a few consolidation loans from the past, hobby spending credit card (that I buy stuff for Etsy with), target card – though we both contribute since it’s mostly household, and currently a plan for Denver health – which 10/10 recommend, I love them. Oh and every other month, a IRS plan too. Again, we split that.
I do not have a car payment, we are all paid off. 🚗 That being said I do have a ton of debt I am whittling down which is exciting, I really just want to be at 0.
I recently started making more money, woo, so I’ve been giving myself some spending money, and saving the rest. It’s really nice to have extra income and very excited for this year.
I split these bills into the 15th and 30th, since I get paid that way.
Grocery breakdown
For groceries and gas, I track these in my planner, and for groceries also in a sheet. We spend about $120 each week. In 2019 we spent $5037.04 total, $4,893.18 in 2020, $5,277.13 in 2021 and $6,009.22 in 2022. I also keep track of extra trips, where and what not. For two people, I don’t feel like we are very frugal. I eat a lot of pre-made crap, a combination of busy and ADHD I’m sure. We drink bubbly water and drinks, no soda though, and keep snacks. We’ll okay with this as it keeps us from eating out which is worse. We don’t make sushi or poke at home, which is the main thing we go out for. It’s just not as good, we suck at it. I love numbers, so this is always fun for me to track.
I don’t have a eating out per year cost breakdown, though I really should probably keep track of that. I am not sure I’d care, as I said we tend to prioritize other things because we are fortunate and can.
How we split things
So we’ve been together as of this time, like 16 years. I had to calculator that. We did not share money for the first like 10 years, and after about then we started sharing more, less split, and claimed married on taxes for money saving purposes. Yeah we’ll slow. Not every couple splits accounts anyway ever. The way we do it is my partner is a better saver than me, so he holds the main savings.
I have ADHD and money burns my soul. So I give him a chunk to save every month. I’m comfortable with this and have dipped into the that savings for emergencies as needed. I keep a minimum of $500 in my savings for protection, then stash couple hundred around the house for emergencies there too. The rest just gets spent or sits around as needed.
I want to say I spend more outside on things but not really, we’ll pretty even. We have an interna; rule of whoever suggest it pays for it. We also share a credit card with a higher limit for emergencies – I’m stranded somewhere kinda emergencies. He can see the purchases on this so I try to keep it to purely that. Then this year we are hopefully getting on INS together, super excited for that. Pending all the checks but yeah. We both have some retirement savings, we should do more 100%, but we’ve only just started making above paycheck to paycheck here in Denver. Shit is expensive.
So our money goals this year are to get to $0 debt as best I can, see if we can get a condo with new income (instead of rent), and share insurance.
Sinking funds
I previously had sinking funds up to this point. I haven’t put anything back yet for this year but I try to do this every year. The ones I like to do are:
Taxes ($300)
Car Tag ($120 – we get a park pass with them in CO)
Xmas ($300)
Car Maintenance ($500)
Laundry ($100)*
*We split this too, since it’s coin operated and just take turns as needed.
We keep to our budget pretty well. Most of my debt is from 2020/2021. In 2018 I consolidated and was feeling good, then was out of work for pretty much all of 2020. Bleh. So working on that. If you are curious, I used Upstart and I do recommend them. They’ve worked with me on missing payments when I was unemployed and were over a good experience.
I do feel like we’ve been spending a lot at the start of this year though, we got a new exercise bike, and a couple new kitchen pots and pans – good quality is not cheap. It’s not like we didn’t discuss or expect them, but just feels like a lot so quick in the new year.
I’m very excited for this year and feel good about it. I know the world is stressing out with layoffs happening everywhere but I hope your work stays consistent and full of joy. It’s hard out there.
Need help putting together a sheets budget? Here is a copy of mine:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F0aZsBN8w3IqLt8tGCDqVFnnoEUc5PDFNXXRV_UNt-c/edit?usp=sharing
I left the basic formulas. I strike out things as I pay them to help me remember what I paid, but you could also check things off with a check list instead.