Tag Archives: monthly spending report

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Mid-Month Financial & Budget Check Up

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Instead of letting my spending addiction control me, I’m now using Mint’s planning features (read my interview with Mint CEO about this feature release here) and am finding that the tools are extremely useful in keeping myself on track.

This month has been a bit wonky between travel and gifts and end-of-year expenses, but I’m trying my best to stick to the budget I set for myself. What I really like about Mint is that it’s easy to adjust my budget as the month goes on. So, for instance, this month my medical/health costs skyrocketed, and I reduced my entertainment and education costs to balance out some of the extra spending. Ultimately, my goal is to save as much as possible per month without living “frugally.” I just want to live smart under my means, and earn enough income to make this possible without being “cheap” or “frugal.” Also, this month I received a surprise $200 bonus, so I am using that to pay for the remainder of the month with the exception of whatever other bills I will be paying automatically before the 1st.

Expenses so far this month: $3983

Auto: $194 / 200

Bills: $341 / 400

Education $0 / 10

Fees: $12 / 15

Food: $363 / 500

Gifts: $90 / 100

Health & Fitness: $1422 / 1500

Rent: $632 / 632

Personal Care: $78 / 100

Shopping: $423 / 500

Travel $322 / 400

Other: $70

…………………………..

Come January, I’m shrinking my budget and focusing on saving more each month. This month, I’m lucky, I have a lot of belated freelance income owed to me that is coming in the mail so my excess spending should balance out, even leaving enough to save a bit. Still, I need to be more careful next year. I may only have a job 1/2 the year if my company runs out of money, which means I might need to give being a frugal a try, at least for a little while, and maximize my savings as much as possible.


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Mint.com and My Year-Over-Year Progress

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I’m the first to admit that I fail when it comes to acing the test on smart shopper and saver. Over the past two years I’ve grown wiser and more careful with my purchases, but I’ll splurge more often than not.

That’s why it’s especially rewarding to use the Mint.com trends tool to compare my spending habits month and, even more importantly, year to year.

Using the tends tool, I can easily see how much I spent in any 12 month period.

From June 2007 to June 2008, I spent $37,455. That was when I was making about $35k for the whole year, mind you.

In the past 12 months, from Jan of 2008 to the end of Jan of 2009, I’ve spent $30,523. My income has gone up and my spending has dropped over $7k. I am very proud of this and hope I can continue on my not-so-frugal living within my means path.

Looking at 2008, I spent $29,916 total. The biggest expense over this year was “home,” with $10,553 going to rent and moving expenses.

2008 Spending Chart

Home: $10,553
($879 a month)

Shopping: $4,633
($386 a month)

Food: $2,734
($228 a mont)

Auto/Gas: $2,211
($184 a month)

Entertainment: $1,969
($164 a month)

Bills: $1,737
($144.75 a month)

Gifts: $331
($27 a month)

Business Services(?): $399
($33 a month)

Education: $560
($46 a month)

Travel: $1269
($106 a month)

Health & Fitness: $1,660
($138 a month)

Fees: $238
($20 a month)

Uncategorized: $1,048

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March Budget

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I start making a good chunk of more money next month at my next payday, but for now I’m going to try to be careful to stay within my paychecks that I cashed today.

$3,700 Total to Spend/Save for March

$1050: Rent / Utilities
$71.33: Cable/ Internet
$57.00: Verizon Phone
$128: Health Insurance
$138: Car Insurance (paid in advance)
$200: Gas
$27: Gym

SAVINGS

$1000 ING Direct for Taxes Account
$300 Roth IRA
$250 Sharebuilder
——————————
$3083

LEFT FOR SPENDING IN MARCH…

$617

$250 Gift for Boyfriend’s Birthday
$300 Food
$67 Entertainment / Other

…………

March is official “be fucking frugal” month. Next month my income goes up $1500, so there will be a lot more flexibility. Unfortunately my boyfriend’s birthday falls BEFORE that. Well, I’ll take him out to a nice dinner and get him a gift that won’t be as extravagant as last year’s Wii. Oh well. I could invest less in my Sharebuilder account this month if I want to spend more on the birthday, so that’s always an option.

I also hypothetically have another $825 owed to me for one of my freelance jobs and another $300+ owed to me for that cell phone bill that my old company was supposed to pay. So if I actually get paid that money, then I’ll be doing fine. But I don’t know when those checks will come, if ever. If they do come, I’m going to put more towards my Roth, and spend a little more on the bf’s birthday.

The good news is that I won’t have much time for spending money in March. My show opens March 28, which means the major cost of the month will be GAS to get to and from rehearsal at the theater about 30 minutes away. That’s why I put $200 in gas for the month. BUT I’m getting paid $500 to direct this production, after the fact, so my balance is going to look a lot healthier in April. It’s March that will be tight, since I don’t know when any of these other paychecks will be coming in.

Sadly, March is also the month when I wanted to seek out a tax consultant to discuss how to arrange my accounting as a freelancer. But I guess I’ll have to take a stab at figuring out my estimated quarterly tax for Q1 08 by myself. Meanwhile, I also have to file my taxes, but I’ll wait to April to do that, so I have some money to at least go through TurboTax or something.
Although my income last year was pretty low, prob about $34k or less, so maybe I can get away with filing for free. Hmm. That’s for another entry, eh?

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November Expenses (as tabulated by Yodlee, Mint and Geezeo)

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Yodlee tells me…

Rent: $1050
Other: $675
Clothing: $199.07
Telephone: $156.61?
Online Services: $136.20
Auto: $97.36
Health: $73.12
Cable: $62
ATM/Cash Withdrawls: $40
Gasoline: $31
Uncategorized: $927.47???


Mint tells me…

No Category: $2,216
Shopping: $891
Entertainment: $32
Healthcare: $35
Business Services: $104
Personal Care: $119
Food & Dining: $137
Auto: $198
Bills: $260

Total: $3992

But then… after I try to figure out why my expenses are so high for November, I find that the month is counting two month’s worth of rent (why is nov 1-nov 30 counting a check cashed on dec 7?)… so $1050 should be subtracted from that.


Geezeo Tells me…

(as far as I can tell there’s no easy way to pull up one month’s worth of transactions and find a category breakdown in Geezeo.)


Wesabe tells me…

I need to upload my bank statements for the past five months or so. Uh, no thank you. Why bother with uploading when all these other sites do it automatically?

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In short, all of these online personal finance sites are still far from being perfect. I don’t need fancy social networking capabilities, I just want to be able to track my monthly spending (accurately). This would require the ability for me to go in and manually change the transaction date (or what month it should be reported as).