It’s been a few moons since I’ve posted a monthly budget. I fell behind on doing monthly budgets back in the summer. I have no excuse, it’s just something that didn’t get done and before I knew it, another month rolled by. I made sure I sat down and did up a budget this month because I have some big expenses this month. Here’s what I plan on spending my moolah on this month:

This month’s big ticket items are service for my automobile, property taxes, a big ole shopping trip, and hydro. The service for my car is a guestimate, I’m taking it to a local mechanic for a once-over before winter. It’s not making any weird noises or anything like that, it’s just that it’s getting close to 100,000 km so I want to have someone have a look at it and do some preventative maintenance.

The shopping trip is an annual trip I make with the ladies of my fam-jam down to the States. We split the rent of a big beach house with another group of ladies and we go down shopping for the first half of the week and then they have the house for the last half of the week. By splitting the rent between everyone going, we usually pay around $35 each and that’s for two nights. Sweet deal, huh? It’s nice too because the place has a huge kitchen so we usually grab some groceries and make our meals there instead of eating out. My goal for this shopping trip is to get all my Christmas shopping done as well as pick up some new wardrobe pieces. God, $500 seems like an insane amount of money to spend on a shopping trip, but funny enough, last night when I was making the budget I changed it from 400 to 500 without blinking. I do love to shop, I’ll admit it and I could probably spend $500 easy if I’m in the right mood. In an effort not to spend $500, I’m going to draw up a plan of attack (some might call it a shopping list, but I like to think of shopping as more a battle), so stayed tuned for that next week. $500 is the ceiling, I’d rather spend half that, but for now I’ll overbudget to cover my ass.

I’ve budgeted more for my hydro bill too because I’ve cracked and turned on the heat. I made it this far without turning on the heat, but when I got hom e yesterday and saw the house was 11 C – I figured it was time. The main floor of my place is heating by baseboards and even though I only turn on 3 baseboards and only turn them on to 15, they really do add onto the hydro bill. I really hate going from $50 hydro bills to $200 bills. Stupid baseboards.

That’s my November. How is yours shaping up? Any big budget items for you?

Tagged as: monthly budget