Monthly Spending Report: June 2015

For me, June was a time of new begin­nings. I moved to a new apart­ment in a new town in a new state to start a new job. I’ve been busy set­tling in, try­ing to fig­ure out my way around town, and learn­ing tons of new infor­ma­tion at my job. Who knew there was so much to learn about data­bas­es and SQL? I spent most of the week­ends dri­ving from one place to anoth­er doing var­i­ous things like pack­ing as much as pos­si­ble into my car and get­ting my new kit­ten! His name is Bartholomew and he’s a Siber­ian For­est Cat. He enjoys things like hair bandies, wak­ing me up ear­ly and snug­gling with me.

I also got the chance to meet some won­der­ful peo­ple I met on the inter­net in real life when I passed through their towns. Sam Lust­garten from frugaling.org and I had a thought pro­vok­ing con­ver­sa­tion (for me any­ways) about blog­ging and life. You can see the results of that con­ver­sa­tion here in My Man­i­festo. I also got to meet up with one of the knit­ters from our Tues­day night knit­ting group on Google+. She’s the sec­ond per­son from the group I’ve met in real life and we had a won­der­ful time chat­ting over break­fast at Crack­er Bar­rel. We only live 3 hours from each oth­er, so I’m hop­ing we can make it a more fre­quent occur­rence than once every 3 years!

My expens­es haven’t quite matched up to what I thought they would be, as some things I thought would be a big deal aren’t and oth­er things came out of nowhere. One exam­ple would be I did not expect to want to spend so much mon­ey at work on food. My new cafe­te­ria is way bet­ter than my old one, so my will pow­er is sore­ly test­ed when I see peo­ple get­ting smooth­ies from the smooth­ie bar or omelettes made to order at the grill every morn­ing. Thank­ful­ly, I’m much clos­er to work so my auto relat­ed expens­es should drop dra­mat­i­cal­ly. One sil­ver lin­ing to mov­ing is that my insur­ance relat­ed costs have gone down due to me liv­ing in a nicer, less risky area. I also received a slight raise as a Cost of Liv­ing adjust­ment. Every dol­lar counts!

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 June 2015.

 

Gas & Fuel	Gas was high­er than I thought, but it was due to an unex­pect­ed trip when I could­n’t fit my essen­tial stuff into my car for the last dri­ve. I was still below bud­get, though, so no sweat.
Util­i­ties	Util­i­ties were high this month as I paid the last water bill for the old place, and had dual gas and elec­tric­i­ty charges for part of the month. Good news is, my util­i­ties are going to drop like a stone- my new bill was $35!! Inter­net was also cred­it­ed but did­n’t get acti­vat­ed until lat­er in the month at the new place, so I expect a high­er bill next month.
Food & Dining	OW. I went WAY over. Part of the excess is mov­ing my kitchen to the new place and not hav­ing any access to it, and part of is some lazi­ness on my part :/ This is my one weak­ness and I need to do better.
Gym	This is my last month pay­ing for a gym! My con­tract is up and I’ve been busy enjoy­ing the free gyms offered by work and my apart­ment complex.
Rent	Eagle eyed read­ers will note my base rent went up. There was some funky busi­ness with get­ting the util­i­ties set up, so I was slight­ly over what I should’ve paid.
Ship­ping	I sent sev­er­al pack­ages this month and changed my address with the Post Office.
Late fee	I’m ashamed. I missed my cred­it card pay­ment by ONE DAY. It’s now on auto pay so that nev­er will hap­pen again.
Home	Most of these expens­es were reim­bursed as part of my move. I have a great company!
Activ­i­ties	I signed up for a soft­ball team!! I’m excit­ed to get back out on the diamond.
Pets	Holy moly, start­ing from scratch with a pet is EXPENSIVE. Thank­ful­ly, the lit­tle fur ball is adorable and total­ly worth it. I also splurged and got Mew from a breed­er, but I’ve been sav­ing up since I went on the wait­ing list. I’ll be inter­est­ed to see what the month­ly cost for him ends up being.
Shop­ping	Ran­dom things for the new place, like anoth­er show­er cur­tain and a replace­ment plunger for the one that van­ished dur­ing the move.
Trans­fer	Ok this sec­tion is all sorts of wonky due to the Iden­ti­ty Theft I expe­ri­enced. The amount you see is what they reim­bursed me for the fraud­u­lent charges and the trans­fer to the new card.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I spent a total of $3748 this month. I’m glad I was able to bring it down from the crazy high of last month. Sub­tract my trav­el expens­es reim­burse­ment of $645, and I spent just over $3000. This is much clos­er to my tar­get spend­ing goal, so while I’m not thrilled to go over, I’m also not mad at the choic­es I made.

Look­ing for­ward to the months ahead, I have my last pay­ment for Ecuador due and prob­a­bly some small pay­ments as I get involved in more activ­i­ties in my new town. Life will be super exciting!

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