2010 Budget

This year my new year’s resolution is going to be a $600 budget challenge similar to Laurie’s challenge on her blog.

I’m not sure if I will be able to score as many amazing deals, but here is how I’m going to work mine.

I will start with $600 on an Excel spreadsheet. The following items will be deducted from my budget.

1. Groceries
2. Personal Care items (shampoo, soap, razors, toothpaste etc.)
3. Cleaning products and other household items
4. Entertainment – including dining out, liquor etc.
5. Frivolous purchases – including amazing deals I find posted on my usual blogs (aka Hip2Save)

Things that won’t come out of my budget:
1. Rent payment
2. Utilities
3. Insurance
4. Gas & Car Maintainence  – I will keep track of my spending though, since I enter everything into my Iphone already.
5. Clothing – I think I am going to use clothing as an incentive for working out/ any weight loss, so I will make sure I get good deals on everything, and keep track of my spending, but I will not be setting a clear limit.
6. Gifts – I am going to try and be as thrify as possible. Gift baskets from deals will probably be the majority of my gifts & I will not buy something over $10 without a specific person in mind.

The plan is to use giftcards and RRs as much as I can. Any money out of pocket gets deducted from the $600. Any rebates get added to it, as well as any proceeds from selling stockpile items (either from ebay or a yardsale?? Possibly?)

My goals are to spend as little as possible, help Andrew get out of debt and pay down my student loans. I would like to have an additional $5,000 in my money market account by this time next year.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Comments? Is anyone else doing anything similar for the new year?