Monthly Spending Report: July 2015

 

Ahh July.….. heady days full of sun­shine, root beer floats, and splash­ing around in a pool. I tru­ly love sum­mer. I can’t stand being cold, so the days where the tem­per­a­tures don’t even dip down below 60 at night are like heav­en to me. I lay around, soak­ing up the sun like a lizard. I’d say like my cat, but he isn’t a fan of the warmth due to his long fur coat. He would spend all his time in the fridge if I let him. That’s no joke either- every time I open the fridge I have to defend it from the fur­ball streak­ing by on his way to the bot­tom shelf. Just one of the ways he makes my life so much better 🙂

 

 

 

 

July was full of fun events and hang­ing out with new friends. I was able to strike a good bal­ance of watch­ing my mon­ey, yet still get­ting out and doing things. My sis­ter and her friend swung through town, so I was able to offer them a home cooked meal, cute kit­ten to play with and a com­fy bed to sleep on. I enjoyed a vari­ety of events such as a polit­i­cal din­ner fea­tur­ing all the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nom­i­nee Can­di­dates, help­ing out with a hot air bal­loon crew at a local bal­loon fest, play­ing soft­ball, and explor­ing my new town (most­ly the fan­tas­tic bar scene!). More impor­tant­ly, I stayed fair­ly close to home this month, which meant my expens­es were on the low side.

Why do I do a month­ly spend­ing report?

I find it best to do a month­ly spend­ing report for a few rea­sons. One, it helps me eval­u­ate how I did the pre­vi­ous month. Did I hit a tar­get reduc­tion in spend­ing or did I go way over bud­get for a par­tic­u­lar cat­e­go­ry? Two, it helps keep me account­able. How can I make an extra pur­chase know­ing I’ll have to explain myself to all of you? Talk about awk­ward when the blog­ger can’t walk the walk and talk the talk. Three, I want to prove this crazy thing called finan­cial inde­pen­dence works! Fourth, it pro­vides an exam­ple of real world bud­get­ing and expens­es. Some of the peo­ple I talk to haven’t ever seen a prop­er bud­get or seen one put into action, and part of the pur­pose of this blog is to lead by example!

I use Mint to help me track my spend­ing and keep an eye on my accounts. Some peo­ple use Per­son­al Cap­i­tal and oth­ers use You Need a Bud­get (YNAB). What­ev­er tool works best for you and your needs is the best one for you, since every­one and their bud­gets are different.

So, with­out fur­ther ado, I present my spend­ing (for bet­ter or for worse) for July 2015.

 

 

 

Gas & Fuel	I’m pret­ty sure this is the low­est amount I’ve spent on gas in a long time. I rode my bike to work often in July and stayed close to home. Liv­ing 1.5 miles from work rocks!
Util­i­ties	Well, the inter­net bill was much high­er this month. 2 months worth of bill, plus the mov­ing fee they assessed me. Ugh. What a nec­es­sary evil. My oth­er util­i­ties came in about $78, which I expect to be the high end of the spec­trum, since it’s been ridicu­lous­ly hot and humid here lately.
Food & Dining	I came in at $280 this month, which I con­sid­er a decent attempt at get­ting close to $200. I cooked more of my own meals this month and tried to bring my lunch to work consistently.
Rent	Since I now have a kit­ten, my rent went up $50 per month to $1067. I knew this going in and pre­pared for it.
Pets	A new cat­e­go­ry to encom­pass all the mon­ey I spend on Mew. I have it set on $100, although I think I’ll low­er that to $50. Not includ­ed are his vet fees (lots of shots for baby kit­ties!) and the one time pet deposit to my apart­ment complex.
Ship­ping	I sent sev­er­al pack­ages this month and changed my address with the Post Office.
Movies & DVD’s	I went and saw Ant Man in the­aters. In my opin­ion, it’d be worth it to rent. Not to see in theaters.
Gifts & Donations	I donat­ed some mon­ey to a polit­i­cal cam­paign and bought a T‑shirt from their offi­cial store.
Gym	I thought I was done with that last month. Guess not… boo!
Home/Shopping	I need­ed to replace some essen­tials in the house. As a house­warm­ing gift to myself, I got a Chrome­cast! Worth it so far! I also need­ed to replace my bicy­cle pump, as the old one broke in the move.
Vaca­tion	My last pay­ment for Ecuador was due. Now I’m offi­cial­ly ready to go on the trip! I won’t have any more vaca­tion expens­es for awhile, at least until I start plan­ning for Eng­land next sum­mer!! I’m sav­ing up my pen­nies now!
Cash & ATM	I bought new stamps from the ATM at work. $9 for 18 stamps!?!

 

 

 

 

 

I spent a total of $3079 this month. Com­pared to the pre­vi­ous months, I spent MUCH less mon­ey, which always makes me hap­py. Still, I know that I can get low­er than that, which is why I’ll be embark­ing on a zero spend month for August (or as close to zero as is human­ly pos­si­ble!). As far as I know, I don’t have any big pay­ments due this month which will help with the low spend­ing thing. I will have a cou­ple of small expens­es for some activ­i­ties I already planned but nowhere near as bad as the pay­ments I’ve been fork­ing out the last few months.

While I spent less than pre­vi­ous months, I still spent more than I took in. This is an easy way to burn through the mon­ey I have saved up and is an even quick­er way to con­sumer debt. “I don’t have the cash right now, so I’ll just put it on the card.” Next thing you know, I have $5K in cred­it card debt. That’s NOT going to hap­pen, so rein­ing in my spend­ing is essen­tial at this point.

 

 What did your month look like? Did you stick to your budget?