Utilities: I over budgeted in this category. I wasn't sure what was going to happen as I hadn't received a bill for February utilities when I was putting together my budget. Now February and March are paid at my old apartment. Still waiting for April's bills though...I've just accepted that these bills will always be a month behind.
Random: I finally took my suit to the dry cleaners. I also finally bought the cable to connect my computer to a projector. As a graduate student I give several presentations a year and have been borrowing a friends cable for the last year. He's hopefully graduating soon and moving on so it was a good time to get my own! This also covered a couple miscellaneous moving items. (Did you know that you pay the post office a dollar to forward your mail? Just one dollar!)
Food: Nothing exciting. By budgeting my food allowance weekly I've been doing much better at staying in budget.
Cell Phone: Larger than normal payment has been dealt with. YAY!
Transportation: Took a zipcar for a couple of hours to go to a doctor's appointment.
Fun: Climbing gym membership! Internet no longer included. I'm thinking about putting climbing into the health category since it isn't just fun, but also a workout!
Health: Minor expenses for prescriptions and over the counter cold and sinus medicine. (Stupid cold season...)
E-fund & Slush Fund: -$50 to cover the month. Clearly I don't plan on moving every month but I think this also shows what I meant when I said that my savings was a goal and doesn't always become a reality. Before I created savings goals it was much more common that I would run out of money and deplete my savings account. With my new savings strategy I rarely go over budget and if I do I actually have money in my savings account to cover it!
To be completely honest, money from my paycheck still went to my emergency fund via direct deposit and I took money out of my slush fund to cover everything. I just don't think moving money around in my accounts is terribly relevant to my overall budget. Although, when my slush fund is low it does help motivate me to save!
While my apartment expenses were high this month, I'm very happy that I was able to cover most of the shortfall by cutting costs instead of digging into savings. I'm very happy that no other category went over budget this month! How were your months?
67% of expenses to your apartment is definitely a lot!
ReplyDeleteBack when I was in college, my mom would transfer the rent money to me on the last day of the month, but my roommate who paid the landlord in one check would never cash my check until many days into the next month. That accounting drove me nuts since it looked like I had extra cash in the month before the beginning of the academic term and that I was out extra cash in the last month of the academic term.
That's what I hate about paper checks! You have no good way to keep your account up to date.
Delete67% is painful and luckily it's going way down! I just reworked my budget after my move and I've finally gotten rent to be under 30%!! I'm super excited to finally be making progress in some of these areas.