After January’s insurance payments and logistics, and February’s vacation spending that clocked in at over $15,000 alone, March arrived and did something remarkable: almost nothing happened. Our household spending came in at $9,657. Which, for us, is practically serene.

I want to call March normal. But as I said to myself while putting this together — I’m almost afraid to. Because when you look at where we came in versus budget, it’s actually hard to find much to complain about. Maybe this is just what an unremarkable month looks like after you’ve been staring at two pretty dramatic ones.

Let’s walk through it.

The Budget vs. Actuals

Here’s the full picture. Budget amounts are the same every month — these are the targets we set at the start of 2026.

The Grocery Situation

Groceries came in at $1,553 — our budget is $1,300, so we were over by $253. That’s the biggest red number in a category we actually track intentionally, and honestly, I’m not surprised. February was weirdly light on groceries ($710) because we were in Mexico for a chunk of it and came home to a pretty picked-over pantry. March felt like restocking month. Did we need $1,553 worth of groceries? Probably not all of it. But we also needed a lot more than $710, so this is the pendulum swinging back.

No grand revelations here. Sometimes the grocery bill is high. This was one of those months.

Personal Care: The Ice Bath Chapter

Okay. We need to talk about Personal Care. Our budget is $85 a month. We spent $374. That’s a $289 overage, and I’m going to walk you through exactly how we got there, because it involves three purchases I did not anticipate, one of which I am still processing emotionally.

First: reef-safe sunscreen for our upcoming Hawaii trip. We’re going in April and I loaded up on the good stuff — the kind that doesn’t destroy coral reefs and also costs approximately as much as a small car payment. Worth it, I think. Fine.

Second: my husband bought himself a new heart rate monitor. This is a man who tracks things. Data. Metrics. Biometrics. Whatever you call it. A heart rate monitor is perfectly on-brand and I have exactly zero objections.

Third: an ice bath bucket tub thing. Don’t ask me. I was told it’s for recovery. I told him the bathtub was free. He now owns an ice bath bucket. Moving on.

Subscriptions: The Amazon Prime Annual

Subscriptions came in at $147 against a $75 budget. This one is simple: our Amazon Prime membership renews in March. We budget $75/month for subscriptions across the year, but when Prime hits it pushes March above that. It’s the same every year — no mystery, just a timing thing. Not worth losing sleep over.

Internet, meanwhile, came in at $84 again. I am still overpaying and I still haven’t made the call. It is on the list. It stays on the list. We will revisit this in April, and if I am still typing the same sentence in the May update, I give you full permission to judge me.

The Trust Update: Responsible Adulting, Billed Accordingly

We spent $1,650 on legal fees in March — this wasn’t in the budget because we didn’t know it was coming when we built the budget, but it absolutely needed to happen. Our trusts were almost eight years old and there were updates we wanted to make. When you have kids and a house and accumulated years of life decisions, you really do need your estate documents to reflect where you actually are, not where you were nearly a decade ago. We got it done. It’s done. I’m glad we did it even if it’s not exactly the kind of expense that makes for exciting blog content.

Household: The Fridge Made the Call

Household came in at $2,374, which is actually $626 under our $3,000 budget — but not because we were careful. We replaced our basement fridge in March, which ran about $1,600. Appliances, as a category, have zero respect for your budget timing. They just go. Fortunately the rest of the Household line was mostly what I’d describe as “the usual Amazon situation” — a steady trickle of things you ordered and then vaguely remember needing. Nothing dramatic.

The Garden Has Started (Quietly, in the Basement)

Hobbies came in at $99 against a $100 budget. I mean, that’s basically perfect. This category had two items: $35 for new membranes for our reverse osmosis system (maple syrup season — we tap our trees and the RO system concentrates the sap before boiling, which sounds very involved because it is), and $64 for potting soil and fertilizer. My husband starts all his garden plants from seed in March. Lots of peppers, lots of tomatoes. By the time summer arrives, we will have more garden starts than any reasonable household needs, and I will pretend to be surprised every year.

Vacation: $145. I Know.

Our vacation budget is $3,333 per month — that’s how we’ve structured it to average out big trip costs over the year. In March, we spent $145.49. That number made me blink when I first saw it. And then I remembered: we’ve already planned and paid for pretty much everything through next year. Our Hawaii trip in April is largely squared away. Future bookings are locked. That $145 is just the little drips — a random lodging deposit or similar — on a category that is already very much handled.

It’s a strange thing to look at a month where you spent $145 on vacation and feel like you’ve already spent thousands. Because we have. We just spent them in different months.

The Pleasant Surprises

A few categories just… behaved in March. Auto was $224 against a $720 budget — just fuel, no service, no insurance (disability insurance hit in January and is paid annually). Medical was $159 against a $475 budget. Meals and dining came in at $377 against a $600 budget, which is a solid showing for a month where we were home and not using food as entertainment. Recreation was $232 against $350.

None of these are exciting. But that’s the point. March was a month where most things stayed in their lanes, we handled a couple of one-time items that needed handling, and we ended up with a completely reasonable month of spending.

The Honest Summary

If I’m being real: March was the month I wish every month could be. Not zero spending, not performative frugality, just… reasonable. The trust update was unbudgeted but necessary. The ice bath bucket was unbudgeted and I’m still working through my feelings. Groceries were high and vacation was low, which, given that they’re often inversely related to whether we’re actually home, makes sense.

Will April be this calm? We’re heading to Hawaii, so… probably not. But I’ll take March for what it was: a quiet, mostly unremarkable month that didn’t require any explaining. Those are rarer than you’d think.