Do You Have a Separate Budget Line Item for Thanksgiving Dinner?

When I made my November budget, I asked myself whether I should make a separate line item for Thanksgiving dinner or whether I should roll the total up into groceries.

I’m doing a Friendsgiving this year, and will be responsible for buying a lot of our Thanksgiving feast (other people are picking up some of the other costs), so I wondered whether it was worth it to keep those groceries separate from the rest of the month’s groceries and household shopping—and yes, I am going to separate out “groceries” and “household/toiletries” in 2018, but we aren’t in 2018 yet!

The only reason I could think of to separate the groceries would be to keep my trends consistent; I could look at Mint and think “yes, this is usually what I spend on groceries every month” instead of “wow, I spent an extra $100 on groceries this month, I wonder why… oh, that’s right, Thanksgiving.”

So I didn’t end up separating out Thanksgiving groceries, but I did add a little extra to my grocery budget this month to cover them.

But I thought I’d ask: do any of you make separate budget line items for Thanksgiving dinner? Also, USA Today claims we’ll all spend $97.55 on “non-travel related expenses” for Thanksgiving this year—is that roughly what you plan to spend?

This post is part of The Billfold’s Holidays and Money series.

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