Weekly Budget Update:
Underspent Childcare: $1 (really just rounding in my budget)
Underspent Food by $20 (knew we�d be overspent in beer/wine so tried to offset this)
Overspent Beer/Wine by $36 (DH used food $ �by accident�)
Overspent Dining Out $6 (budget was 0 for this week)
Underspent Gas: $31

Total: Underbudget by $10 for the week

I was going to take that $10 out and add it to my $20 challenge money, but I�m going to let it ride. I suspect the underspending in Gas might be offset this week as just a timing of fillups. I�ll watch this for a few weeks to see what we really spend. It may fluctuate a bit from week to week. All in all, not too bad for our first week. It may take a while to get DH fully trained :-)

So, I feel like I�m about to cheat on my budget a bit this week. DH wants to do a big Costco run tonight. Buy a big piece of meat, diapers and a few other things. This will be funded by some money we have in savings not really earmarked for anything. So this run will be �outside� the budget and not funded by any budgeted funds. It will certainly put less pressure on our weekly food budget. I feel like I�m cheating though � like I should just live on what�s in our budget. I guess since it�s my budget I can make the rules and I should just be thankful I have this money to use. This will leave some room in the food budget to perhaps stock up on a few good deals rather than have to spend it all on food for right now.

As I tweaked our budget over the past week, I somehow ended up with $20 extra dollars so I added that to my challenge money. I also decided that every other week (when it�s my week to get an �allowance�) I will take whatever change and $1 bills out of my wallet and put it in my challenge money. This week I had $4. I also found $1.16 in change around the house.

Beg Balance. $ .75
Additions: $25.16
New Balance $25.91