Actual Expenses: July 2012

The last month has been rough (even by typical grad student standards) and I've been feeling more than a little behind.  One of the things that helped clear my head was taking a look at where I am now in comparison to where I was a year ago and I must say, things are certainly much much better!  I've officially been tracking my spending for the last 18 months, which gives me a bit of data to look back on.  Instead of just looking at the past month's expenses, today I'm going to do a little bit of a comparison.  First, a look at where I was a year ago.

What's that? Where is the savings?  To tell the truth, the above was actually more than I earned in a given month.  I had to take out about $100 from savings a year ago to cover my expenses.  PF bloggers all like to say that the first step is to stop spending more than you earn.  While I agree that is a very important first step, I think tracking what you earn versus what you spend is a realistic action that can help you get to the point where you are spending less than you earn.  If you don't know you are spending more, or how much you are spending, or how much you are making, it's going to be very difficult to come up with any concrete plans to rein in said spending.

Bills(Apartment, Utilities, Phone):  I've reduced my expenses from 49% of my budget to 28% of my budget.  I can certainly be happy about freeing up 21% of my money! 

Food:  In the last year I've gotten way more consistent about bringing a lunch and not eating out as often and it shows. Saving an extra 5%! AND I'm even within my budget on this.

Health, Random & Transportation:  Nothing exciting.  I had a medical bill I wasn't anticipating (really? It takes the lab until now to bill me for tests done in February??)

Airline Tickets:  Apparently July is the time I plan out the rest of my years travel plans.  I'm visiting family much further away this time around and it shows.  At least, I've managed to cover the cost within a normal paycheck!

Emergency Fund:  Automatic savings is a good idea for me.

How was your month?  Have you compared your current spending and your past spending to see if your finances are improving?

August 2012 Budget

Ouch.  July has been an expensive month...so I'm really hoping that August will put me back on track with my goals.  If all goes well it should!

Bills (Apartment, Utilities, Cell Phone): 31% on the basics.  This shouldn't change much for the next 6 months...and then we get to reexamine the living situation.  Is it weird that I'm excited by the concept of living in the same apartment for 6 whole months!  I'm sick of moving.  I've moved 16 times in the last 8 years (I just counted, I'm even surprised the number is that high...).
 
Health: Why did I think it was a good idea to schedule my doctor and dentist appointments in the same week?  Oh? What? AND it's the same week I'll have family in town (or was that not the most recent change in plan? Wait, I'm three plans behind?! Oh... )

July 2012 Budget

First of all, my budget has a lot of breathing room right now in comparison to the last year and a half.  Maybe that's how lifestyle inflation begins but right now I'm appreciating the breathing room that moving has given my budget.  I have decided that I won't change my direct deposit until September because I'll be switching funding then and will have to deal with that whole situation again.

Bills (Apartment, Utilities, Cell Phone): Nothing new here, but these categories have balanced out now so I don't expect this to change in the near future. I think my estimate for utilities is still a bit high, but I'll leave it here for now.  I have two more months left on my cell phone contract.  I suppose I could switch to a cheaper plan but I really do appreciate my smartphone.  This is probably a splurge I will keep.

Food: The same as usual. As long as I rarely eat out I can keep within this number.

Health: Usually a good chunk of this category is designated towards my short term savings to pay for my insurance each term.  This month I didn't leave any extra; instead, I've allocated the extra amount towards airline tickets.

Random:  The last couple months were the first in a long time that I gave myself a bit of spending money.  It left my hands a bit more quickly than I expected...  I'm not sure this is a good way of doing this.  It is something that I'm playing around with in my budget to see what will work for me.

Transportation: I just bought a new bike!  I think I'm excited enough with my new toy that we'll stay within biking distance for a little bit.

Airline Tickets:  I have several trips that I plan on taking.  I'm going to visit two family members (in opposite parts of the country) and attend a friends wedding (also far away).  This month I've squeezed enough out of other categories that I think I can purchase some of these plane tickets without dipping into my slush fund.

Emergency Fund:  Normal direct deposit from my paycheck. I have actually just finished filling up my emergency fund but I'm planning on transferring a bit of money out of this account to take advantage of a higher interest rate (I will talk more about this opportunity later.)  Therefore I'll keep this direct deposit as is for the moment.

Actual Expenses: June 2012

What a month.  Here is the overview of how June actually went (in comparison to the plan).

Apartment & Utilities: YAY!  I'm still happy with how much these expenses have dropped because of my move!

Food:  I overspent a little bit here... but it was delicious!  The is the hardest place for me to stay within budget.

Health, Transportation & Cell Phone:  Nothing unusual and not a lot of spending so I'm happy with the result.

Random:  This was the first time in a while that I had room in my budget to give myself some spending money.  Apparently I have an easier time resisting ALL spending than I do keeping to a budget.  This is something that I'm going to have to keep an eye on...

Slush Fund & Emergency Fund:  It feels awesome to see a good chunk of my paycheck going into savings!

???:  How can there be question marks in my actual expenses?  At least that's what you should be asking if you're paying attention!  Well the truth is that this is money that I haven't spent (yet - although it's probably money that will be spent soon).  Here's the short version of events.  Initially I was thinking I would just put more money into my slush fund while planning on looking at new bikes.  Then, I started planning to buy a bike sooner than I had anticipated (apparently if you ride a bike that's too small for you 8-10 times more often per week than you had been - especially if this is right after you've messed up a knee that you've previously broken - you start having knee problems...).  Then, I had a family situation where I needed to fly to a relative, and I planned to use this cash for that.  Then, the location of said family situation dramatically changed and a different relative bought me my tickets using their miles.  And now, I think I'm going to go back to buying a new bike.  Hopefully within the next week.  If nothing else unexpected happens.  So this is money that is ear-marked for "something urgent" and has been left in my checking account.  Typically I don't leave much money in my checking account as I find it helps resist my urge to spend money (and any auto-payments go onto my credit cards and I keep careful track of my accounts so I don't feel the need for a buffer to prevent overdraft fees).  However, I feel rather silly moving this into my slush fund to earn the half cent of interest I might be able to get just to move it back out two days later.

Actual Expenses: May 2012

Of course my actual expenses are always a bit different than I expect at the beginning of the month.  My May budget was posted here.  Overall, I think this month was a bit expensive, but I'm starting to feel a bit more in control of my spending.

Apartment: It's nice to see this percentage going down.  I had to pay for a week in my old apartment but from now on I'm paying cheaper rent every month! Yay!

Utilities:  I'm happy with this for the moment.  Splitting internet, electricity, water etc. among three people is nice.  We'll have to wait and see what the summer heat does to this.

June 2012 Budget

I'm super excited!  This is the first month of paying rent only for the new apartment!  Which means I'm finally spending a reasonable amount of money on housing!

Apartment:  25%!!!  This is down from almost a full 50% of my income because of my move!  I'm now sharing a two bedroom apartment with three people.  Without roommates this would never be possible.

Utilities:  I believe that I've over estimated the cost here.  Since I just moved and summer is quickly heating up, I'm not sure what to expect as we start to use the AC.  I typically like to budget for the largest month of the year and then use any excess to fill in gaps other places in my budget.

Actual Expenses: April 2012

Considering I wasn't planning on moving when I created my April budget, I think things went reasonably well.  I only took $80 out of savings to cover moving associated costs! The breakdown is shown below.

Apartment: I actually didn't have to cover a deposit since I'm moving in with my significant other (SO) and his roommate (2 bedroom place).  This is high because I will now pay my portion of rent at the end of the month, such that rent can be paid via one check on the first (I think it's fair that no one has to cover rent and then get paid back! Apparently people have different comfort levels with how "group purchases" should be dealt with. Who knew?).  So really, this is rent for both April and May.  This percentage will go down dramatically when everything gets straightened out over the next couple of months!

May 2012 Budget

A lot of things have happened this month that are disrupting my finances (and life in general) and will continue to do so throughout the next month as well.  While April hasn't ended, I've started looking forward at creating my budget for the next month and would like to share what that looks like.

In the last month, Emily at EvolvingPF directed my attention to the concept of living wage (http://www.livingwage.geog.psu.edu/).  It's an interesting idea, although I live well below those numbers for my area.  I've just been trying to find a way to work my thoughts on that into a future post.

Now on to May's Budget:

My Budgeting Madness & April 2012 Budget

I’m very excited because I have $30 to spend on groceries today!  I budget on a weekly basis with the week beginning on Monday (to force any weekend fun money to come AFTER groceries and other important purchases have been bought for the week).  

I also budget on a monthly basis, because I get paid on a monthly basis and I like to look at improvement one month at a time.  Otherwise it looks like my financial status is fluxuating wildly.  I realize that I’ve overly complicated the whole budget thing, but what can I saw, I’m an engineer.  The important thing is that I’m budgeting and I’ve found a system that works for me.  (Most of the time anyways...there is always room for improvement!)