Some planned spending:
Bought 2 new scrub tops for my new(!!!) job. Realized I could re-use the pants from school, since they didn't have the school logo, just the tops. Saved about $30 there. Although now my pants are black and navy, and it's hard to find tops that match both those colors. I think I did a reasonable job, though. So now I have 3 pants and 3 tops, which will get me through 3 12's in a row. Anything shorter than a 12 and I can just do laundry if I have a longer string of shifts.
I slightly "cheated" the budget though. We still had a MasterCard gift card from our wedding, for $50, so we used that for the tops. Figured it counted as 'starting up our married life' expenses, and now I won't lose the gift card before I get a chance to use it!
I have a 10% off lifetime loyalty card which really impressed the cashier lady- I guess they gave them out "AGES AND AGES ago"- I got mine back in high school because they carried the cheapest dress socks. Made me laugh/feel old. It was the second one she's ever seen, and she's worked for the company for 3 years. Glad I kept it for all these years, because they changed their computer systems too, so it's only if you still have the physical card will they honor it.
All told, the 2 tops came to $43. We used another $3 to get DH a lacrosse ball for pressure point work, and then I used the rest for a coffee. First coffee we bought out in over a month! All of it went on the gift card, which is now used up.
A few miscellaneous expenses came up, but I think all are justified. We had to buy an extension cord ($6.99 on amazon) so that we can easily move the AC unit from one room to another- saves us having to buy a separate dehumidifier, since it has a "dry" setting. So $7 to avoid spending over $100. We also need to buy new bolts for our toilet seat. Should only be a couple bucks, but has to be spent- one of the bolts sheared clean off. Stupid plastic junk. And we'll have to renew registration on the car soon, and get environmental testing- forgot these expenses in the estimate of this month.
Otherwise, we're still on track this month. Keeping our spending low. Still haven't filled our cars yet, but will need to Thursday. Grocery spending is a bit high, because it's been a restocking month, but it's still within budget. (Also, we include meds in this, which we only have to buy every few months, and they're all falling on this month).
All in all, it's going pretty well! Still doing $200/week into DH's tIRA. So there will be about $1,200 total "financial" spending for this month- $800 into IRA, $400 went to loans.