Category: Money management

When I was a baby, one of my first words was, “Shopping!”  I would say it when I saw my grandma (my mom’s mom).  My mom loved to shop.  My grandma loved to shop.  My sister loves to shop.  I also love to shop.  We’re bargain hunters.  We’re quality-finders.  We comparison shop and help friends find just what they’re looking for, and we love it.

Unfortunately, it costs money.

Fortunately, while I love to shop, I tend to feel like I don’t do a lot of it.  I felt happy and confident in that notion until I looked at Mint.com and see that we spent over $4,000 in the “shopping” category in the last 12 months.

Our “shopping” category includes things like clothes, electronics, books, and anything we buy from places like Walgreens or Target.

Bryan and I don’t spend money equally.  I’m going to guess that I spent 95% of the dollars spent in the “shopping” category.  Bryan isn’t the one in our family to buy clothes or to go to Target to stock up on office supplies or to buy a replacement coffee maker.

This is one category…since it’s almost entirely discretionary…that I first cut back on when we need to save some denaros.   It’s also one that would make a lot of sense to budget this category more closely.  I think I have a good sense of what we spend, but if I had cash in an envelope to spend, I’d be sure to stay on budget.  I still haven’t implemented the cash budgeting system, but I may. On the other hand, Mint.com sends me emails when we’re approaching the budget limit, which is pretty helpful.

On the plus side, (according to Mint.com) our family spends less than the USA average on the “shopping” category.  And it helps that unless I have someone to watch my kids that shopping isn’t too fun an experience in general!

I spent about $500 on clothes and shoes for Sylvia and Andrew over the last year.  That seems like a lot, but then again, much of it is from resale shops…

How does your family handle “shopping” expenses?  Do you have a clothes budget for each family member?  How do you decide on the best time to purchase things like, oh, a replacement microwave or a new lamp?  Are you a compulsive reader of Consumer Reports?

Just wondering 🙂

This post is the fifth entry in my money management series.  To start at the beginning, see post one: money management, post two: housing, post three: food matters, and post four: a penny for the coffee, a penny for the tea here!

Over the last year, our third largest spending category (10% of expenses) was travel.   I feel really fortunate that we can be spending a significant portion of our funds on something that is so much fun (as compared to the #4 category – automobiles).  Plane tickets are so much more fun than new breaks!

This year we spent the majority of our travel dollars on our July trip to Sweden, but looking over the list brings back other fond memories of smaller trips we’ve taken.  I love getting to see friends and family since we’re all so spread out.  The internet is great, but spending time together, face to face is definitely the best.

It’s about time for us to start mapping out 2010.  Bryan and I usually sit down in December or January and figure out what trips we want to take and then map them out over the next couple or few years.  Then we make sure we have the vacation time we need and can save up for those travel expenses.

I don’t right now, but I used to have a bank account set aside for vacation savings.  I had some funds automatically transfer into the account every month from our primary checking account, and then when we wanted to take a trip, we had dedicated money to do so.  Now that I’ve written that down, it sounds like a good idea.  I think I should set up an account for that again!

At our current bank (Charles Schwab), I have a primary checking account, a savings account ($1,000 emergency fund), and a long-term emergency fund (slowly working toward saving enough money to cover 6 months of expenses).  I think I should also set up accounts to segregate vacation funds and maybe another one for car repairs, and maybe one for household expenses like a roof (eeek) or a new sofa.

In general, I hope we can control our other expenses enough that we can afford to allot a sweet percent to something we all love doing so much.

This post is the third in my money management series.  To start at the beginning, see post one: money management, post two: housing, and post three: food matters here!

Last Friday night (cool person that I am) I spent a couple hours at our grocery store – Woodman’s – with my shopping list, coupons, and a clipboard in hand.  My mission was to record the prices of the products we most often buy and to also record prices of some cheaper (but less sustainable or “responsible”) products.

You all had some great thoughts and suggestions about food, and I put some of it to the test.

For those of you not in the area, Woodman’s is a warehouse-type grocery store.  The shopping experience is…I’d say…not pleasant.  It’s also the cheapest place I know of to shop for groceries.  In the past, Bryan and I decided to cut our grocery bill (maybe $10/week) by shopping here instead of at Copps and the Willy Street Co-op.  It was a trade-off that allowed us to keep purchasing the food items we wanted (although the produce really does kind of suck).

I wanted to find out if buying all my toiletries, organic groceries, and cleaning supplies at Woodman’s was the best strategy, or if I could get some of the same items for less money elsewhere.  I found that a few toiletries (deodorant, contact solution, and tooth paste) were all actually cheaper at Woodman’s (the contact solution was $7 instead of $8) than at Walgreen’s.  Organic milk, Annie’s mac & cheese, and 7th Generation diapers were about equally priced at the Willy Street Co-op (which I’d say specializes in organic and local products).  So overall, I’d say that I’m doing pretty well by doing all my shopping at Woodman’s.  I’d love to buy more at the Co-op or at Trader Joe’s, but I feel like I’m saving a bit by doing it this way…and that’s allowing me to buy more of the products that I love.

Several of you suggested that I consider using coupons.  Some of you were shocked to hear that I have never clipped coupons.  I like the 20% off Gymboree or Macy’s coupons I get in the mail, but I really can’t think of a time I have clipped grocery coupons.  But, hey, I’m willing to try.  So I spent a couple hours looking online at various coupon sites.  There are hundreds of them.  The NY Times did a good article last week on how people are getting into clipping coupons again.  I was hoping to find a site where I could enter in all the brands of food that I like and they would let me know when manufacturer coupons became available.  As far as I can tell, no such site exists.  Instead, I found myself reading through hundreds of coupons for products I don’t want (mostly processed foods), and I just felt like I was reading advertisements.  I had a bit better luck by going directly the websites for a couple brands I like (Organic Valley milk and Cascade Farms organic frozen vegetables).  So I saved a couple dollars using coupons for the first time.  Woodman’s doesn’t have store coupons (or big advertised store sales), so I don’t think that the coupon route is going to be a huge saver.  If I wasn’t as picky…if I didn’t want a certain brand of yogurt or breakfast bars or soup…I think coupon clipping would be a lot more of a money saving technique.  But after doing research into brands and rather carefully deciding which ones I most want to support, I don’t like to switch brands to save $0.30.  Ahh, decisions, decisions.

Next I did a comparison of four products: Coffee, diapers, milk, and eggs.  Here’s what I found.

Continue reading “A penny for the coffee, a penny for the tea”

Hi!  Welcome to my third installment in my series on money management.  (See post one and post two:housing here!)  In an effort to spend a bit less and save a bit more, I’m taking a look at my family’s expenses.  I started big, and I’m working my way down.  However, our second biggest expense – Food – is such a big topic, I think I have the pieces of several posts floating around in my head.

First off, the details.  According to the analysis of Mint.com, our family around 20% of our money on food.   I’ve done some looking around, and it looks like the average American family spends 5-10% of their income on food…roughly half of that spent on groceries and half spent dining out. So we spend at least twice the average.  That’s a lot!

Granted, our Food category is pretty inclusive.  At the grocery store, we also purchase things like laundry detergent, diapers, light bulbs, Kleenex and toiletries, so those items are all lumped in with our grocery store purchases.  Even so, we spend an average of $160 each week on groceries.  Is this crazy?  How much does your family spend?

Here’s the rest of the picture.  As a family, we spend an average of $6/day eating out.  We spend about $4/week at coffee shops (this also includes ice cream at JavaCat!).  Over the last year, we paid $2,400 on food outside of the home.  Geesh!  It felt like we were being judicious in our choices about eating out, but that seems like a lot of money!

As we look for ways to curb spending, our Food category seems like  a critical one to examine since it comprises such a big chunk of our overall expenses.  We love our food, and for us, the food we eat has a lot to do with our values and the way we want to nourish our family and our world.

I got a master’s degree in Natural Resource Policy and Behavior.  As an undergraduate at Carleton, I took classes in sustainable agriculture.  In my work at Gathering Waters, I did some work with the Federal Farm Bill.  Throughout these experiences, I’ve read and thought and talked extensively about conventional and more sustainable farming practices.

I’ve looked at the history and the current status of the US’s farm policy, and I’m acutely aware of how farm subsidies, school lunch programs, food-stamp programs, and even the food pyramid have in many cases lost the concept of feeding people real, fresh food that’s good for our bodies and our communities.  I’ve seen how difficult it is for people to change behaviors.  Perhaps most importantly, I’ve learned in my studies that since we live in a capitalist society, if we want things to change, we need to vote with our money.  I feel passionately about that.  No matter who I elect into office or what education programs I help create, the thing that matters the most is, collectively, the companies we support with our daily dollars.

I want to see a shift away from conglomerate farms.  I want farmers to earn a living wage.  I want farmers to use good, healthy farming practices.  I want lots of products offered in grocery stores that don’t contain trans-fat or high-fructose corn syrup or long lists of words I can’t pronounce.  I want to enjoy food that was raised or grown right nearby so I’m not encouraging so much long-distance transport of food and so I can support local farms.  I want my kids to know and expect their food to be real, healthy, and tasty.  To achieve those goals, I believe that I need to be a conscientious consumer.

Now I want to step back for a moment and give a disclaimer.  What I’m hoping to do in this post is to share some of my family’s values, which are then shaping the decisions we are making about how to spend our money.  We’ve come to these values over the course of many years, and they are personal and evolving.  I think everyone has the right to express their own values – be they political, religious, or of a foodie nature.  I just hope that no one read any judgmental tone in any of this, as none is intended.

So back to being a conscientious consumer…  Unfortunately, in general, I’ve found that purchasing food and products that promote the values I hold dear means I’m paying a premium.  But I’m willing to do it!  Since the time I was a young girl in the 1980s and learned about dolphin-safe tuna, I’ve felt that it’s worthwhile to spend a few extra cents to purchase products that are doing good.

Ten years ago, Bryan and I bought all conventionally-produced groceries.  We now spend maybe half of our grocery budget on what I’ll call non-traditional food items…things are either organic or local or higher quality.  In my next post, I’m going to take a look at some of those items (milk, eggs, diapers, coffee) and look at our budget implications of spending our money this way.

My hope is that if we have to change some of our spending patterns, we can find strategic areas to cut so we can continue to live by our values while saving some money in the near-term.Let me know what you think about all this!  How much does your family spend on groceries every week?  Are there more expensive things you buy that think are really worth while?  What grocery items are most important to you?

I look forward to hearing what you have to say!

As Bryan and I have been looking at our expenses, I’ve been starting big and working my way down.  If you have the interest and patience, I think I’ll proceed with this money management topic (see my first post here) by sharing some thoughts about each of our major expense categories.  So jump in, and hang on!!

(I’m pulling my stats from Mint.com, which I’ve been using to analyze our spending over the last year.)

The first expense, the biggest one (27% of our annual expenses), is housing.

  Continue reading “Budget item one: housing”

I’d just like to send a big thanks to everyone who responded to my first post on money management.  It feels great to have a community of friends and family chiming in, and it’s neat to see all the different ways that families make their finances work.  Thanks for sharing all your ideas and suggestions and support!

I think that writing out some of my thoughts about budgeting and money management should be fun.  In fact, my next post is already in the works.

Tonight, I’m working on the budget for Andrew’s preschool (I’m just getting started as the treasurer…it seems like all my free time these days I’m thinking about money!).  In that context, I was just thinking about how budgets are great because they really help define the priorities for an organization.  Like Jessica’s comment (or actually Mitch’s comment on my last post), budgets aren’t about limiting so much as they are about purposefully allocating.

Well, in my case, maybe they’re mostly about limiting, but I’m going to try to think of it positively!  Thanks for joining me as I meander forward, through this topic.