Frugal Forward

I didn’t intend to go this long without blogging. But, my world pretty much imploded. I won’t go into too much detail, but I had surgery, then my dad had surgery a week later. He experienced so many complications that what was supposed to be 5 days in the hospital turned into him almost dying. He spent nearly 2 months in the hospital and is in the middle of months and months of outpatient rehab. And then our son took a break from school and moved home while we get a medical condition he is dealing with under control.

It’s been a lot. A LOT.

And because I was in survival mode *and* recovering from surgery, my previous rules took a temporary hit. I still didn’t shop at Target (aside from one trip when I was in a different city when I tried to go to CVS and Google Maps sent me to a CVS inside a Target *insert eye roll*), but I did use Amazon Prime for a few deliveries since driving was either not an option or was still painful. Plus I wasn’t allowed to lift anything much heavier than 10 pounds, so…

When I was visiting my dad when he was in critical condition, the only thing he would eat was a protein smoothie from the Whole Foods smoothie bar. Getting him to eat was more important than my desire to boycott Bezos. So, there you go.

Budget Update

Because our son, who is a voracious eater, has moved home, our budget needs an adjustment.

Again, I’m going to follow the USDA Food Guide when coming up with a budget. We previously were spending within the thrifty plan, but I don’t think that will be possible with our son home. So, we will target the low plan.

To calculate a monthly budget, we add the following:

• Female ages 19-50: $264.90 per month
• Female ages 51-70: $257.40 per month
• Male ages 19-50: $304.90 per month
• Male ages 51-70: $286.10 per month

Since we are now a 4 person household, no adjustments to these amounts is warranted. That means a low spend monthly budget for our household is $1,113.30. Does that sound outrageous to anyone else? Because this doesn’t count household goods, only food. I will be targeting this budget amount for purchases of food, paper products, laundry detergent, etc.

Since we put back funds for bulk purchases from Azure Standard and Butcher Box, we will still allocate funds to those “buckets.” The balance in our Azure Standard bucket is currently sitting at $347.83. I zeroed out our Butcher Box “bucket” since we had a delivery in February and remaining funds were used for garden purchases. We will adjust our Azure Standard allocation down to $150/month (from $200) and Butcher Box will stay at $200/month.

That means our spending target will be $763.30 on general groceries and household products each month, which puts us at about $190 per week.

I will pick back up on updates next week. I hope that the rest of the year is much less eventful.

*Some links in this post may be affiliate links. For links to products on Amazon, as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. You are not charged for using an affiliate link. If you use my link, I earn a small commission, which I can use to offset the administrative costs of this blog. If you use my links, thank you.

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