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2018 Financial Wins and Fails

December 28th, 2018 at 02:57 pm

Wins:

Cash flowed Christmas!

Have kept track of spending - excel spreadsheet of major bills and six months of grocery store spending. Who knew a family of four could spend $1000 per month on groceries alone.

Took lunch to work over 80% of the time, when working in the office.

Tracked travel expenses and transferred extra expense money to savings.

Saved ~$500 by borrowing digital books from the library. (Love my kindle!)

Reduced family eating out to once per week.

Started this blog!

Fails:

On average, spent over $1,000 in groceries each month.

Invested in the stock market and the market has been falling ever since. (Yes, you can blame me!)

Haven't paid anything extra on the mortgage.

Posted in Personal Finance | 6 Comments »

6 Responses to “2018 Financial Wins and Fails ”

  1. creditcardfree Says:
    December 28th, 2018 at 03:08 pm 1546009704
    1546009704

    You had a lot of great wins! Honestly, when my girls are home, we do spend close to $1000 on groceries. It is a bit ridiculous, but we have different tastes and we do buy organic on many things. I'm sure there is room for improvement as you said.

    Maybe you could consider your stock investment as a win...you are buying on sale, when the market is down!

    Thanks for participating and sharing!

  2. crazyliblady Says:
    December 28th, 2018 at 03:45 pm 1546011917
    1546011917

    You did have great wins. I don't know if I would consider the grocery spending a fail. I think it all depends on what you are buying. If you have someone in the family who is on a special diet, it can get more expensive. But if buying better food means you have less health expenses, that is a win.

    Do you have any debts other than the mortgage?

  3. Family COO Says:
    December 28th, 2018 at 06:30 pm 1546021856
    1546021856

    Thank you both for comments here and on my other posting. I will check out the youtube video and the blog posting on sinking funds.

    Wins and Fails are a matter of perspective. The $1000 monthy average grocery expenditure is greater than the medium 4 person family budget amount set by USDA. For some reason, several other financial blogs I read have covered this topic. I would also say, I find cost of food greater in Florida than other states. There must be some hidden taxes which grocers pass along to the consumer. Florida is a no state income tax state so the state has to get its money from real estate taxes and other sources!

    Happy New Years!

  4. mumof2 Says:
    December 29th, 2018 at 02:53 am 1546052021
    1546052021

    we spend over $1000 a month on food as well but in Australia food is much more expensive...our goal is to cut back next year as well...its so much money

  5. LuckyRobin Says:
    December 29th, 2018 at 04:13 am 1546056812
    1546056812

    Our grocery budget for 4 (2 college age children at home) is $800 every 4 weeks and that is for food only. No toiletries or cleaning supplies (they have their own budget). And it is tough to stick to it, but I usually manage. I have to do a lot of meal planning and some very careful shopping. I try to not buy a ton of convenience food, but I do have a few things I still get. I make a lot from scratch, though. We have a higher cost of living in Western WA as well, but so far no sales tax on food. It's on everything else, though! I would prefer a $1000 a month budget, that's for sure, but we are paying off our last debt, so we are sucking it up as much as possible with the lower grocery budget.

  6. rob62521 Says:
    December 30th, 2018 at 07:49 pm 1546199396
    1546199396

    Lots of great wins! Congrats!

    Using the library is one of my favorite ways to save money. I'd rather go to the library than shopping any day!

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