Monthly Spending Report: April 2015

Wow. Where did April go? It seems like just yes­ter­day I was post­ing March’s report. April went by super fast due to a num­ber of activ­i­ties I par­tic­i­pat­ed in, which lead to a LOT of expens­es. This month was basi­cal­ly shot in only 2 weeks. How­ev­er, I tight­ened my belt and it was­n’t as bad as it could have been. List­ed below are my expens­es for the month and items of note after that.

Over­all, not too ter­ri­ble. My main bud­get cat­e­gories were pret­ty great (only 1 red!!!), but as usu­al the “unbud­get­ed” cat­e­gories killed me.

1) Gas- I hon­est­ly thought this was going to be way high­er, but I man­aged to get by with only fill­ing up when I made a trip on the week­end. I went some­where every week­end in April (wed­dings, drill and oth­er out of town activ­i­ties), so that meant lots of driving.

2) Util­i­ties- I get hap­pi­er every time I get my bill because it keeps drop­ping! Thank good­ness the weath­er is final­ly get­ting warmer! I can han­dle being hot­ter much bet­ter than I can being cold. My room­mate will be mov­ing out next week which will drop my last util­i­ty bill even more.

3) Food- the bud­get killer. I strug­gle with meal plan­ning and not wast­ing food. If I plan out my meals for the week and stick to it, I’m fine. It’s when I don’t plan that I have prob­lems. I only went out to eat for lunch 4 times last month (wah­hooo!) and brought snacks along for var­i­ous trav­els. I’m try­ing to get it down to $200/mo, which should be eas­i­ly doable for a sin­gle female who is as tiny as I am. Thank­ful­ly, I’ve already start­ed to cut back on the excess trips out which helps (I’m look­ing at you, deli­cious Domi­no’s pizza).

4) This is my last month of pay­ing $900 for rent. I will be mov­ing to a new place in June that while slight­ly small­er, will charge more. Go fig­ure. I”ll be only a mile and half from work, so I should get some sav­ings in the auto category.

5) Speak­ing of autos, I had some unex­pect­ed expens­es pop up. The speak­er on the front pas­sen­ger side went out, so I bought a replace­ment set. I con­sid­er speak­ers to be a vital part of the car, and have been tough­ing out the no music phase by lis­ten­ing to pod­casts on my phone. I also had the head­light burn out, which I was able to replace myself! Oth­er­wise, that $70 would’ve been much higher.

6) I am mov­ing to a new place and had to put a deposit down. I was lucky it was only $500 and not an entire mon­th’s rent. Good news is I’ll get my old deposit back when I move out of my cur­rent place.

7) My niece’s birth­day was this month. I man­aged to find a good tod­dler bed on Craigslist so now she has a real bed to sleep in!

8) Activ­i­ties includ­ed a char­i­ty triv­ia night and see­ing a movie. Not bad for one month!

9) Cloth­ing was the one that hurt the most this month. While I got some great deals, I hon­est­ly did­n’t need to get new clothes this month. I am mov­ing to a new office where the dress code does­n’t men­tion jeans, so I will need some nicer cloth­ing. It just could’ve wait­ed a bit longer. I also haven’t bought much in the way of new cloth­ing over the past year and some of my nicer shoes were get­ting worn out. Good news is I’m now set on clothes and shoes for a long time. Also includ­ed was my annu­al Ama­zon renew­al fee.

10) Trav­el- while it says $778, I actu­al­ly only paid $250 thanks to cash­ing in my trav­el reward points. I now have my plane tick­ets for the trip to Ecuador in Octo­ber, and only need to put down a cou­ple more pay­ments to be com­plete­ly set.

11) I need­ed cash for some activ­i­ties and also had to reim­burse my room­mate for half of his por­tion, since he’s mov­ing out in 2 weeks.