Weekly Spending Wrap Up

Here's how the week went. We're on vacation at the beach this week (left Wednesday night, back on Saturday night). Our vacation house is in Oregon (a sales tax free state), so we buy a lot of household items, kids clothes, wine, etc when we can find it & it's in the budget. Sales tax where we live is close to 10%, so it's a substantial savings.

And, I think I finished up 95% of my Christmas shopping! My sister will be getting a gift (from the two of us) for my grandmother's husband & I still need to find a few stocking items for the hardest person to shop for - M. :-) I'll also be getting reimbursed for several (most of) the gifts I bought this weekend. Between my mom & sister, I'll be getting $293 back, which isn't taken into account below.

I ran a ton of errands today, & you can definitely tell by my numbers. :-) I went super far over my liquor budget for the month (originally $60), but found my favorite nicer wine for 40% off on a whim when I walked into Safeway (Kroger) today. Score. I'll rejigger the budget a bit to accommodate. I also had zero budgeted for the boys clothes this month, but discovered they've outgrown all of their underwear & socks that I keep at our vacation house. I do my absolute best not to drag a bunch of clothes back & forth to make it easy to pack/unpack, so I replaced those. I still need to get them some additional pants (in a bigger size) to store at our vacation house, but may look for those on Black Friday if I choose to venture out for an hour or so. Kids clothes are sometimes a huge score on Black Friday.

• Monday - No spend day
• Tuesday:
• $101.37 - Costco for groceries
• Wednesday - No spend day
• Thursday -
• $3.50 for two carousel rides
• $4.99 for one stocking stuffer my husband discovered at the local toy store
• $9.99 at Fred Meyer for Pokemon cards for the kids (little splurge since they were so good during our drive.) A bribe. :-)
• $.81 at Fred Meyer for groceries (radishes & an onion)
• $40.95 at Costco for groceries
• $39.98 on rain boots for the kids. Their old boots were too small/ripped out of the back.
• $46.97 on a few household items (olive oil mister, replacement kitchen utensils, etc)
• $65.94 on wine. This was more than I was budgeting ($40 for the month), but M reminded me that the stock this wine infrequently and we don't want to run out for the holidays. ;-)
• Friday:
• $2.92 - Fred Meyer for groceries (I underestimated our tomato usage, & we were out of lime juice. A critical cosmopolitan component. :-))
• $118 for Christmas gifts. (Digital picture frames for the Grandmothers). My sister will reimburse me for 1/2.
• Saturday
• No spend day
• Sunday
• $2.52 on a couple of groceries at Safeway due to a last-minute change in dinner plans (a potato, a fruit roll to keep my errand-accompanying child happy, and a pomegranate because I've been craving them!)
• $82.73 on wine at Safeway.
• $3.48 on a few groceries at Fred Meyer (frozen mini waffles for a quick breakfast when M is out of town next weekend, and asparagus)
• $30.54 at Fred Meyer for new underwear/socks for the kids.
• $31 at Fred Meyer for a birthday gift for my nephew
• $23.38 at Fred Meyer for a couple of stocking presents for my nephews
• $283.64 at Toys R Us to finish up some Christmas shopping.

Summary of the spending:
Groceries = $152.05. On track.
Kids (clothes, entertainment, etc) = $84.01. Over. Clothing purchases were unexpected.
Liquor = $148.67. Over. Way over. Need to find the money in another category.
Gifts = $31. Under on this, and should be done with gift purchases (this is non-Christmas)
Christmas = $430.51. I need to recalculate based on how much I spent towards my own budget vs buying for others (i.e. getting gifts for my mom/sister to give to my kids - they reimburse me).
House = $46.97. Over by a few dollars.

Did you track your spending this week? How did you do? Any surprises?