@slowmotion1952 Thanks for looking out for me! I can share some of my numbers. When I say I don’t have much for groceries until the 8th, it’s little for me but I’m sure other people wouldn’t blink- I still have $180. I gave myself $400 a month for groceries and that’s just for me not my husband. I was likely spending over $600 on groceries a month. I’m too scared to actually look lol. My 7cu in deep freezer is actually 100% packed with perfectly good food, so if I really run out of my budget I can dig into that. It was just always so much easier to run to the store and not have to defrost things.
I gave myself $400 for fun. This is for anything entertainment wise of course, but also things like expensive cuts of meat. Ribeye roasts are currently on sale so I bought a $30 roast yesterday that normally is $77 so I saved $47, but as I will be freezing and using that for Memorial Day that went under fun not groceries.
Anything home and health related for both of us now will get pulled from joint. This includes any physical therapy, dental work, doctor appointments, any home improvement things etc. This way if it’s something we need it’s not constrained to a budget.
I was also consistently spending +500 a month on useless Amazon things which is why I absolutely had to restrict that to $100. I decided that if I could spend only $100 on Amazon, then anything that usually would go to Amazon, 400 for now, would go to vacation. We had to cancel an international vacation because I was planning too many things this summer and that pained me.
