Observations About January Money

So here I am, on the last day of January, a month that for many of us felt like it would never end. But here we are and I can finally flip the calendar over come the morning.

As I type these words, two (yes, two!—count 'em!—two!) plumbers are deconstructing tearing out part of a bathroom wall to reach otherwise inaccessible water lines to the shower. The shower has been dripping since sometime in December. We have been frugally capturing the drip water and watering the household plants with it; they have never looked so lush. But the time had come to take on the drip professionally and about twenty minutes into the first plumber's foray, the problem suddenly became much larger and much more labor intensive. Plumber #2 showed up with #1 after the first went for more supplies and lunch.

Their work and some other events of this month have caused me long periods of thinking about sustainable household income. A sustainable household income is one in which you have enough to pay certain items deemed necessities (housing, food, transportation, healthcare, utilities, among others) and, then, in the acid test, could put your hands on $400.00 for an unexpected bill without having to borrow it, put it on a credit card, or skip paying a necessity to pay it.

We are a sustainable household here. Or, rather, we are two sustainable households as we keep separate accounts and there are some expenses that one or the other of us is solely responsible for (major household repairs: Warren because it is his house; my medical bills: me because it is my health). Warren is on more solid financial footing than I am, but, again, we are both sustainable. Still, listening to the plumbers work away, I wince. I just paid my first large medical bill of 2020 (and I have truly excellent insurance, so I am grateful it was only what it was) and I am feeling the need to watch my pennies closely while I rebuild my savings account.

That being said, I am particularly pleased that we are finishing January with decent expenditures on the food/household fronts. In previous posts, I had not yet set a monthly goal for that kind of spending. For the last few years, we had been shooting for $175.00 a month for food and common household items (dish soap, laundry detergent, and the like). The Department of Agriculture has predicted that food-at-home costs will rise only slightly in 2020 (an average of 1%), so tweaking my goal number would be not due to inflation in the outside world but internal inflation (as in "why exactly did you buy that?").

That being said, I'm moving the dial slightly upward for 2020 to $180.00. which is almost halfway between last year's goal of $175/month and our 2019 average of $186/month.

So what did we spend this month? $156.88 in food and $21.44 in household items, for a total of $178.02. And yes, I took that amount into consideration in setting the new monthly goal.

There are a couple items in that $156.88 to which I want to call particular attention. One is that

So many apples in the freezer that I just shoveled them anywhere they would go

we spent $28.99 on apples, all of which I peeled and either froze sliced to make pies with or made into applesauce (much of which went into the freezer). Why so many apples? Because they were there. Because I had the chance to buy several huge loads at bargain prices (lots of culls). Because the Symphony may participate in Pi Day (Warren and I thought about National Pie Day this month, but we just could not pull it off). Because...well, just because.

The other purchase I made note of in my monthly sheets was two bottles (48 fluid ounces) of canola oil marked down to—wait for —75 cents each. Unopened, not leaking, but put on the Kroger bargain shelf for some inexplicable reason. I was not going to leave those bottles behind.

Our eating out costs in January are solely related to necessary travel: the trip to Mayo in early January and Warren traveling to NYC for the Midwinter Managers Meeting by the League of American Orchestras. When I analyzed our eating out costs for 2019 and noted how much was due to conferences and training, Kim at Out My Window commented that I was being too hard on myself. Thank you, Kim! For 2020, I am not going to track food costs related to Mayo or conferences (for the record, I did note the January Mayo costs: $112.28 for 6 days). Those trips are unavoidable and we both work to keep our food costs as low as possible (we always start to Mayo with a packed lunch; Warren boarded the train to NYC with the same). So going forward, I am not tracking those. I will track our local eating out, from coffee dates to "too tired to cook" to "let's treat ourselves."

Those costs in January? Zero. And since I already have supper thawing out, I know we won't be adding to that princely sum.

Heck, at that rate, my anemic account will be flush in no time.