My Spending for May, End of the Month
Monday, 2 June 2008 at 11:15 am (Shopping / Expenses, Spending Diet, taxes) (bare bones budget, gas, groceries, savings)
Final Tally!
Income (from beginning of May):
Paychecks: $2409.97
VA State Tax Refund: $165
Revolution Money Exchange Pay-Out: $35
Federal Tax Refund: $1529
Money Paid Back to Me: $100
Federal Rebate: $600
Total: 4838.97
Expenses (for this week):
Gas (three trips): $144.82
Tolls: $35.00
Entertainment: 17.65
Rent/Water/Fees: 1033.66
Groceries: $158.69 (Got a lot of June’s groceries, hair dye, and allergy medicine)
Other: $9.00 Service Charge on my bank account…I had less than $750 in my checking at one point, I guess.
How does this look for my Bare Bones Budget Categories?
Category 1: Rent/Utilities/Phone/Internet/Food — $1467.78 / 1,345
Category 2: Savings — $50 / 250*
Category 3: Loans — $262.72 / 262.72
Category 4: Gas/Tolls/Car Insurance/Car Maintenance — $460.26 / 480
Category 5: Entertainment/Gifts/Clothing/Donations/Miscellaneous — $121.04 / 70
TOTAL: $2361.80 / 2409.97 from the original budget, with $48.17 going into savings (*along with “extra” tax money and things).
This also goes to $2361.80 / 2610.80 (the ACTUAL amount I have per month because of the two extra paychecks per year) for a difference of $249.00. So this isn’t so bad, especially since my June groceries won’t be so expensive.
My savings will be allotted thusly:
$25 into Gift fund
$25 into Emergency fund
$1500 into Car Lump Sum (due NOV 2008!) account
$83.17 into Revolving Savings — this account is for when I go under or over on a given month and to fund “wants” periodically.
Other ”extra” money will stay in my checking for now. My car insurance lump sum will be coming up this summer and I can’t even guess how much it will be.
Also: Anyone closely following the blog might note that I’ve switched things from different categories and removed some expenses (like the Target bill payment). I switched the Loudoun car tax to Misc., and I removed the bill payment because the point of this was to show what I spent vs. earned in May, not what I’m paying for now because of April or March.
I’m glad that I did this, but in the future I might just put down my Bare Bones Budget categories instead, since this turned into a lot of searching online for my online banking totals and credit card “recent activities”.
