Budget Busters

NtJS has tagged me to post our five biggest budget busters. We try really hard to avoid budget busters. For the most part we do a pretty good job, but there are always things that we spend money on that we hadn’t planned. So here goes…

1. Uplanned meals away from home. A day of running errands tends to result in a meal out somewhere. When we plan to be gone for the day, I normally pack sandwiches and snacks, but it’s the one-errand-that-turns-into-six-and-takes-forever kind of day when we end up stopping somewhere to eat.

2. Costco. I don’t mind the expense, because we always end up with good food, and it doesn’t go to waste. But we don’t ever leave that store for less than $100, and it’s normally closer to $250.

3. Scrapbooking supplies. This is why I don’t go to scrapbook stores anymore – I haven’t been since last summer. I decided to just work with the supplies that I have for now. Going to the stores just means you’ll find 500 new gizmos and widgets that you didn’t know existed and now want to buy…

4. Organic food. I don’t particularly mind this, because I feel really good about how and what we eat. But we spend a huge amount of money on food. It’s by far our biggest expense category after housing. I buy a lot of fresh produce, whole grains, organic meat, eggs and dairy, etc. We’re healthy, but our budget takes a few knocks at the grocery store.

5. Home improvement. This has been a huge one so far this year. It generally isn’t an issue for us, but for the last few months we’ve been renovating our house, and there have been lots and lots of trips to Home Depot. We bought all of the major supplies in one trip to HD back in February, and got a bunch of cabinets and appliances used, which helped a lot. But since then I doubt that a week has gone by without us spending more money on the house. We’re very close to finished though, so this particular budget buster should be over soon.

Now to tag three other bloggers…

NCN at No Credit Needed

Trish at Blogging Away Debt

SavingDiva at Saving For A Home Of My Own