I've been budgeting for a long time. A loooong time. I have a pretty Excel spreadsheet of our actual spending for November for the last six years, except for 2003, when I was apparently too busy being pregnant and eating ALL THE COOKIES to care. I don't have any idea how to import it here, because below is what happened. Anyway, you can actually see each category, with the corresponding years below, if anyone cares.
For what it's worth, this is a time period that includes going from two incomes in a small house to one income in a big house. Oh how I miss that $380 house payment. Except that we'd probably be living partially in the front yard now, since there's no way we'd still fit in that house.
November
2002
2004
2005
2006
2007
Income
$2,231.38
$2,728.08
$2,380.94
$2,642.12
Mortgage
$379.90
$457.01
$696.49
$690.41
$702.83
Student loan
$236.00
$236.00
$236.00
$189.55
$334.26
Car payment
$420.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
Car insurance
$57.60
$97.76
$108.53
$98.83
$92.85
Utilities/car tags/water bill
$196.00
$159.00
$197.00
$270.00
$358.00
Cable/Phone/Internet
$96.74
$85.24
$89.35
$93.36
$92.50
Gifts
$227.05
$137.71
$35.00
$0.00
$105.00
Food/Home/Grooming
$575.98
$467.72
$783.12
$736.89
$559.55
Entertainment
$86.87
$59.34
$17.56
$22.56
$18.01
Books
$46.65
$23.15
$72.07
$8.13
$29.90
Clothes
$20.08
$52.47
$0.00
$15.36
$16.92
Gas
$155.47
$71.95
$136.83
$197.73
$95.39
Preschool
(only 2007) $70.00
You can see how the utilities are really killing us. We're doing what we can to weatherize, and this year we updated our air conditioners and fridge. We're keeping the thermostat at 68 degrees right now. We'll see what happens.
You can also see that having two kids didn't really affect our budget in any predictable way, except the added expense of moving to a bigger house.
Also, it may seem weird that our gas bill has gone down so far. It may have something to do with not buying pop and candy there three times a day. Maybe. People kvetch about gas prices, but, hello, soda per gallon? Ex-pen-sive!
I feel like we could be doing *so* much better than we are. But I don't know how to get there.
2 comments:
Pretty pink and gray!
Category question...
Do you itemize you receipts every month? Like instead of "household" for a Walmart receipt, you plug each individual item in under "clothes," "food," etc?
Well, I actually cash my paycheck and put the cash into "Clothes" and "Food" envelopes. When the envelope in empty, in theory, I stop spending.
Also, if I were to buy clothes at Wal-Mart it would probably come out of the Food envelope, because that's the envelope I'd have with me. Most of my clothes come from consignment stores though, and I usually make a special trip to buy them.
Post a Comment