My total spending money for all things – food, entertainment (movies/dinner out with friends, etc), shopping (new clothes, etc), medical, and miscellaneous (gifts, etc) – is very limited.

I have around $375 I can spend a month for everything once you factor in my bus pass, my rent, my RRSP $$, my student loan payments and the money I try to put away for savings. Money really doesn’t go that far once you start living in the real world!

My total spending varies each month – but my average food budget is between $250-$300/month

After checking my budget, I have just determined that I have around 20% to actually SPEND a month. When removing food from that spending money, I’m down to under 6% for everything else.

I don’t know how someone thinks 4-6% is high to spend on yourself. 6% of my monthly income is just over $100 – when that covers anything that you spend money on all month (whether that’s eating out, buying new clothes, paying for a movie/going out with friends), that becomes around $25/week to spend as you wish. If I drank coffee, that would leave me with like $15 a week to work with.

I use an excel document to track expenses. It is divided in to categories- i.e. food is fruits and veggies, grains, packaged, and junk. Restaurants are in another category (entertainment) since I am too lazy to tweak the spreadsheet. For food though, everything but the fruits and veggies (which is my local and organic produce) and whole grains is junk food I don’t really need.