Growing up I knew that my dad would enter all the expenditures into a budget (spreadsheet). My mom would give him the receipts from her purchases. I have followed suit for the past 20+ years. I am not sure if I saved the older documents, but the Excel file I'm currently using is the one I've been using since 2005, which makes it very easy for me to analyze how the different categories in the budget have changed over the years. Of course some categories in the budget were present some years and not other years such as adoption, school loan payments, or a gym membership. Naturally over the past 14 years the amount spent has gone up in most of the categories due to inflation plus the growth in the size of our family. One of two categories that have gone drastically down is our clothing budget. We spent quite a bit more on clothing before we had kids. We spent around $500 for clothes and shoes for all five of us in 2016 and 2018 (and about $600 in 2017). This is one number that I think will be increasing because since I went back to work I have done far less shopping at yard sales or consignment shops, and also during that time the Sears and JCPenney stores closed in our area. I used to shop their clearance racks (with a coupon in hand). I really need to buy myself some new clothes as I've discarded some that had holes in them but haven't replaced them; I have been hoping to wait until I lose some weight. This is the first year that Nadia doesn't have many dresses that fit her. She's been wearing some that are a bit too big (loaned from her cousin, Jenna). For years I've had a rule of never spending more than $5 on a dress for Nadia (most of them were under $2). One exception was the dress I bought her for my dad's wedding. Recently I bought her a dress for $9 at Walmart. I don't usually buy clothes at Walmart, and that was more than I usually spend, but it was the color she loves and still a reasonable price. The other category that's gone down significantly is "phone." We used to have a landline. We gave that up in 2008. Paul's cell phone is paid for by his company, and I only pay around $250 a year for my cell phone plan.
I lump a lot of things into the "food" budget. That is where I also put cleaning supplies, toilet paper, facial tissues, shampoo, etc. The food budget was pretty steady the first few years, but then there was a jump several years ago. We are now spending about $1,500 more per year compared to 2005-2008. The weird thing is that in 2018 and 2016 we spent almost the exact same amount (only $1.27 difference between those two years!!), and the 2017 total was also very similar to 2016/2018 - only a difference of $20!
One of the categories that has gone up the most over the years (by percentage not $ amount) would be internet. In 2004 we finally made the leap from dial-up to high speed internet. The first several years it cost us less than $400 a year for high speed internet. Now we spend more than $800 a year. I'm glad most categories in our budget haven't doubled! We used to have cable tv all year long, and we've cut back to only having it for 4-6 months a year, which has helped offset the cost increase to having internet access. Another category that has greatly increased is gas. We've always had two cars, but the cost of fueling those two vehicles has more than doubled over the past 14 years. 2017 was the year we spent the most of gas. It's not a totally fair comparison as I received reimbursements for mileage in 2018, and I put those in the gas category so it made it seem like we spent less on gas in 2018 than we actually did due to reimbursements from the university when observing student teachers.
Considering we were both working FT in all of 2018, we could afford to splurge a bit more in some categories. One that we drastically increased was "entertainment." I put many different things in this category - anything purchased at a restaurant, tickets to see a performance of some sort, field trips, etc. We did the same in 2018 with the "kids" budget which is where I put their gym classes, ice skating lessons, gymnastics, camps, art class, etc. Childcare hadn't been in our budget for several years but reappeared in 2017 and continued in 2018. I haven't included that category in our 2019 budget now that Paul is staying home on the days I go to the university or visit student teachers. Today was one of those days I spent money in both of those categories as we got Vennari's pizza (take-out) for dinner and I paid for two hours of ice skating lessons (40 minutes per child). In addition to taking some pictures of the kids (and tying and untying their laces), I also finished reading a fabulous book - A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner while they skated. We made it home in time for the cable guy to disconnect our tv from cable, but that appointment meant we had to skip the Spanish class at the library. Originally the cable appointment was to be on Monday, but I had to reschedule due to the WNEP tv interview. I'm not sure how many ice skating lessons we'll pay for this year, but I'm committed to at least four. It seems like at least three of those will take place before my spring semester starts.
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