Monthly Spending Report: October 2015

 

In last mon­th’s spend­ing report, I said Octo­ber would be a fun and busy month. Lit­tle did I know that the last 31 days would beat every expec­ta­tion I had! My month start­ed off with my Mom com­ing into town for a ‘just-us-girls-week­end’. We had a blast wan­der­ing through the quilt show (and spend­ing tons of mon­ey on the exhi­bi­tion side). I also got the chance to show her around my new town and take her out to nice places to eat. I love being able to spoil my Mom!

The next big event was my birth­day! I’m now the ripe old age of 25, which means I can now rent a car with­out the age penal­ty AND my car insur­ance will go down. My last big mile­stone birth­day. I cel­e­brat­ed in fair­ly low key style. I round­ed up some friends and hit up the bar the week­end before, and the day of my birth­day I cooked myself a nice pot roast and went fris­bee golfing.

Then it was time for the Chau­tauqua in Ecuador! I wrote a gen­er­al overview post here and also a post here describ­ing the price­less lessons I picked up. From get­ting my face smashed into a birth­day cake- get­ting frost­ing shoved up my nose in the process- to qui­et morn­ings doing sun salu­ta­tions on the Equa­tor, every day was an adven­ture! Now that I’m back at work, I real­ize just how much fun I actu­al­ly had and how monot­o­nous my every life is. Although, I have to say, I real­ly appre­ci­ate cer­tain lux­u­ries now that I’m back home. Things like being able to flush toi­let paper, get­ting drink­able water from the tap, not risk­ing death on twist­ing moun­tain roads and wak­ing up to a purring kit­ty cat are pret­ty damn great. Out of all the things I’ve bought for myself in the name of my birth­day, that trip was the best present of all time.

The rest of the month was fair­ly qui­et as I tried to recov­er from vaca­tion and adjust back to Cube Farm Land.

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 Octo­ber 2015.

Gas & Fuel	Gas was high­er due to me dri­ving back and forth to Chica­go to catch my flight to Ecuador.
Util­i­ties	They dropped anoth­er $20! This no heat/no AC weath­er is amaz­ing on my wallet 🙂
Food & Dining	Haaaaaaaaaaaa I was so over bud­get. I haven’t had a month this bad in for­ev­er. Part­ly attrib­ut­able to spe­cial events (birth­day, Mom’s trip, dates, Ecuador) and to vaca­tion as I ran out of food to cook before leav­ing for a week.
Rent	Back to nor­mal. There weren’t any spe­cial events this month that I could earn Fun Money.
Pets	The rollover helped off­set the dry food pur­chase this month, although I think it’s a bit high so I’m going to low­er it even further.
Arts	I signed up for a stained glass art class. This should help off­set some of my gift giv­ing costs for Christmas!
Health & Fitness	Unex­pect­ed den­tal bill that was­n’t cov­ered ful­ly by insur­ance and fees for my win­ter indoor soc­cer season.
Misc	Pur­chas­es at the quilt show and a year­ly mem­ber­ship to the local Young Pro­fes­sion­al Con­nec­tion group.
Shop­ping	I bought a few things like a new book and some stuff for the house. I keep find­ing things I don’t have. When will it stop!?
Transfer/Travel	I lumped these two togeth­er because the cash with­drawals were for cash spend­ing while on vaca­tion. Part of the trav­el expense was for Ecuador, while the oth­er expense is for my next trip to see the new Har­ry Pot­ter play in Lon­don next year!!

 

Def­i­nite­ly a high­er spend­ing month, as total expens­es came in at $2766. I’m com­plete­ly ok with spend­ing more, as the pre­vi­ous two months were very low and I had very jus­ti­fi­able expens­es. I could’ve done bet­ter with my food expens­es when not on vaca­tion, but even that was kind of worth it.

I antic­i­pate a few changes com­ing up with my bud­get in the months ahead. Ver­i­zon has announced they are rais­ing the rates on my unlim­it­ed data plan, so I will be very polite­ly telling them to go kick rocks and join­ing a dif­fer­ent car­ri­er. This will dras­ti­cal­ly cut my bill from $100 to rough­ly $30! I also low­ered my 401k con­tri­bu­tion to the minu­mum match per­cent­age so I can start to save for house relat­ed expens­es (not that that will nec­ces­sar­i­ly be reflect­ed here). The only changes you guys will see will be a sec­tion­ing off of expens­es between my nor­mal expens­es and house relat­ed expens­es. Oth­er­wise, Novem­ber should be a fair­ly calm month! Hap­py Thanks­giv­ing to my US readers!

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