Bills, Bills, Bills: How well did we do our first month of joint budgeting?

While August is not officially over, I want to go ahead and take a look at our spending for the month to see how it matched up with our guesstimates.

First of all, can I get a what, what for us not going over budget in any of our areas? In fact, we were under a little in gas, laundry, household, groceries, and fun (i.e. going out on dates--although we have about $10 to spend over the weekend. Looks like an ice cream/candy date will be it for us this weekend!) We were way under in utilities, but that's mostly because our building is weird and we haven't quite figured out how they charge us.

I give us an A for the month. Seeing as how neither of us had budgeted as a couple, I think we did a damn fine job of creating a budget and sticking to it. I can't speak for us both, but personally I don't feel like we had to scrimp on much of anything. Yes, we were careful, but we also found cheaper ways of doing things we love, like using Restaurant.com to get discounts on dinner, bringing our own candy to the movies, and choosing matinees over evening show times.

SCL and I have talked briefly, and what he suggested (and makes most sense to me) is sticking to pretty much the same budget for September to see how it compares to August. We may make some minor modifications by shifting a little bit from one category to another, but we'll probably be starting with about the same base amount for this month.

Happy weekend!