Since this is my last post of the month, save for a roundup tomorrow, I thought I’d post the results of my expense tracking. We’re trying hard to pay off our debt, and it’s important to get a baseline of where our money is going. Last night I opened up my trusty YNAB 3 budget to see where we stand.
What I Learned From Tracking Expenses
I can’t say there were many surprises, when it came to tracking my expenses this month. Here is what I found.
I’m a Frugal Person
I spent roughly $300 on groceries for the month. I have a new system for grocery shopping, which I will share with you soon. But the result is, I am spending less than ever on groceries, and my pantry is pretty well stocked. It’s not as stocked as I want it to be, but I’m stockpiling, while feeding my family, and I only spent $300. That’s not bad.
Our Eating Out Bill Was High….But…
Those who have been following this blog for any length of time know that eating out is a huge struggle of mine. This month our money spent on eating out was right around $100 for restaurants (mostly fast food & pizza) and $24 for church dinners.
Church dinners are a budgeted expense that I don’t plan on giving up. Our church provides family dinners on Wednesday nights before AWANA and Bible studies, for the low price of $4 per adult and $2 per child. It’s a welcome break from scrambling around, trying to clean up dinner, before we all head to church. And honestly, for eating out, it’s not expensive and the food is better for us.
On first glance, the money spent on fast food looks high. But, and there is a but, our family took an unplanned emergency trip out of town, when my mother-in-law needed some support. She’s been ill, and we were worried, and we took off for Salem. A lot of the money spent on fast food came from that weekend. My husband went up again about a week ago, and so we added a bit more to the fast food bill.
As far as eating out when we’re home, we’ve done that twice. Once was a planned pizza night, and once was bad planning on my part. My daughter’s choir practice started up again a week earlier than I thought it did. I didn’t realize it until a half an hour before we needed to leave. On choir nights, we need to have dinner in the crockpot before we leave, because we don’t get home until 6:30. Since I didn’t have dinner in the crockpot, we picked up Subway on the way home.
All in all I’m pleased with the money spent eating out. We have definitely done worse. Next month should be better, as we hopefully won’t have any unplanned trips.
Putting Lights on the House at Christmas Will Cost You
Our electric bill was pretty high in January. The bill due in February is pretty high too. Considering the weather has actually been pretty mild around here, the culprit must be the Christmas lights. It was fun for the kids, but not so fun for the wallet. The bills for January and February both span part of December, and we ran the lights from the beginning of December to the end. Live and learn. Next year we’ll probably run the lights again, but we’ll budget better for the high electric bill.
January is a Bad Month for Kids Activities
A new school semester has started, and payments for kid activities are coming due. Between choir, homeschool activities, and movie nights with the youth group, we paid over $100 in fees for the kids. February will be another bad month for activity fees, as my son’s soccer payment will come due. But then we won’t have any big activity fees until fall. Thank goodness!
Housing and Transportation are Expensive
The majority of our money went to housing and transportation expenses. Our car registration went up $30 this year to $86. (I don’t want to hear form Californians, who pay much more than that…I used to live there). Gas for the cars ran us around $230 for the month. Part of that will be reimbursed, as my husband travels a little for his job. And part of that is due to the two trips to Salem our car made. Since future trips out of town for work and more trips to Salem are probably in our future, I don’t anticipate this expense going down for at least a couple of months.
Our housing expenses are the biggest part of our budget, as they are for most budgets. Since my grocery budget is down almost as far as it can go, I will be focusing on ways to cut the household budget this year. I know I can cut the electric bill a bit. And we need to rethink our phone, cell phones, internet, and satellite payments. We’re in contract for some of it, but some of the contracts are up this year, so we will be free to make changes.
I would love to drop the satellite all together, but my husband, the sportscaster, really relies on ESPN for his job. I think I can probably cut expenses by dropping satellite, picking up a basic cable package, and bundling the cable with our internet. I’m not a fan of our cable company, but since that’s our only option for high speed internet, it might be most cost effective to go down the cable TV route.
Of course we have other expenses, but these are the ones that jumped out to me. I can’t wait to get to the end of the year to see how much we were able to lower our bills! I love a good challenge!
Are you working on cutting your budget this year? What’s your plan?
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
I can’t wait for the grocery post. I have noticed how expensive my spending is getting at the grocery store. Part of this is because I am trying to take my lunch and cook at home.
Congrats on getting your budgeting under control. It sounds like you have a great plan for making it work.
Your grocery bills seem right on track. I generally have trouble actually saying how much I spend “per month” because 30-60% of the stuff that ends up on the table was already in the pantry to begin with, so I total up a year’s-worth of grocery bills and divide by 12 to get a monthly average. We only use one credit card, and I download the statement each month (or few months) into Excel and indicate what “type” of expenditure each one is (i.e. groceries, healthcare, pets, clothing, monthly bills), then pivot- table it to get a nice roundup.
We pay $40 per month for gas for the car, but we have one 2-door car and my husband bikes all over town (even in the snow). For your long-distance trips to Salem when the car isn’t full, consider giving a ride to someone on Craigslist and letting them pitch in $5 for gas or something to defray the cost. There are always people on Craigslist Rideshare looking for rides around Oregon, and you can really help them out.
Wow your grocery budget is nearly as low as mine and we only have the two of us at home now. Keep up the good work! We spend around 250 for groceries and about 50 for eating out. Gas is horrible for us as we live 14 miles from work and have 2 vehicles going every day. Plus my husband has to drive his truck a lot, once he’s at work. We spend at least $400 mo. on gas!
Blessings!
I have to say, I am VERY impressed with your eating out budget! Way to go! I think keeping the church dinners is a very good plan, because the expense really is not that great, and the fellowship more than makes it worthwhile. Do you set aside money for those emergency trips? If it is not used for trips because none were needed, it can be put toward savings or other expenses.
Christmas lights do put a damper on your budget. We did not use any outside this year, because last year, even though we only turned them on for a couple of hours each evening, the bill was higher than we were happy with. We also kept indoor lighting to just the Christmas tree, and it was off much of the time. So our electric bill was about 1/3 as high.
You already have a good start on trimming household expenses in that you make your own cleaners. Can you make an extra mortgage payment each year to help pay off the mortgage faster? That will save interest, and every extra dollar you can put toward principal and escrow helps a lot.
As usual, an excellent post, and I am proud of you and happy for you!
I am impressed at what you are able to accomblish with you groceries. I am no where near there yet. I do have a tip that will defintely help you with those pescky mortgage bills. Pay 1/2 of it at the beginning of the month and the other 1/2 two weeks later and you will save about seven years on the life of your mortgage. Pretty amazing considering your paying the same amount of money. In addition, I pay $100 extra each payment towards principal. 100 x 2 times a month = $2,400 per year – or 2 extra house payments I make a year towards the principal. This takes years off the life of your home loan.
Great job on the groceries! And yes, they probably WILL drop more once you get that garden growing :) The secret is to plan your meals around what’s in the garden – and get creative :) My first salads are usually dandylion and nasturtium leaf based :) I am looking forward to that!
Electric… remember some of that light bill is just due to the early darkness here too – and having to turn those lights on so much earlier in the day… plus how dark and rainy our winter is here. It’s not all Christmas lights :)
I’m rethinking my phone (which I have never needed but had to have to get the internet) – internet (basic) and basic TV bundle… I pay $107/mo right now – and want to go to satellite internet for portability and a basic TV only (for local news/weather)…. There needs to be a way to cut that cost somehow. I don’t need the landline phone and rarely use it except to answer pests calling in.
I like your budget insights. I always want to know how other people do it, but money is a tricky thing to share! For my family of three (two adults and a toddler) we spend a month on food and all other household good that are supposed to run out (TP, wipes, paper towels, diapers, soaps, ect.). That includes a specific $30 a month towards food storage–buying food in bulk.
I sympathize with Michelle on the gas costs. We have only one car, but hubby commutes almost 50 miles round trip, so we budget $300 for gas a month.
I guess the main thing we are working on, money wise, is being accountable to what we said we wanted to spend in certain categories and hoping this economy eases enough so that hubby can get a better paying job. (We are paying off student loans for an MBA, but he still has the job that he got with the BA–with no prospect for any raises anytime soon. *frown*)
some how it left out the dollar amout– we spend 370 including our 30 for buying bulk foods.
It looks as if depending on an individual’s situation what choices can be made to reduce spending.Fast food in my opinion is a never.I can pack a PB & J sandwich with quality ingrediants,zip lock bag of pretzels or popcorn,an apple or banana plus water brew my own coffee and I am on the road in 15mins which probably saved my waistline and untold $$.It’s all in the planning, being prepared for the emergency.Isn’t that what blows the budget?You can use this critical thinking for just about any situation like company for dinner-what do you have in the pantry/freezer/canned etc that you can make for dinner at a moments notice? Prepanning and being proactive can hold the line on expenses.I always pretend there is no money to fix the solution then I get creative, can you substitute? could you borrow or swap? in other words what can you do not a quick fix AKA charge or using money that was not intended to be spent.Just some ideasto think about.
Pat, you’re absolutely right. In our situation, we weren’t prepared. It was right after the holidays, and I had slacked on keeping my grocery stockpile up to date.
So now I’m working on getting my grocery stockpile back up, so we can be better prepared for the next emergency.
I can’t wait to hear about your grocery plans. I’ve managed to reduce ours substantially but still spend 450 (for two adults and three little ones). Does that 300 usually include things like toiletries and paper products, etc? Also, maybe you can at least write off the satellite on your taxes as a work expense? You never know what loophole might be there.
You’re doing a wonderful job on the grocery/food budget! I’m thankful that my mom taught all of her kids about smart grocery shopping. And the bonus was all in of the whole foods that we ate! Prepackaged “goodies” are the biggest budget buster, IMO; I splurge occassionally on some snacks like baked tortilla chips, that are not easily homemade. I also love shopping at the Oroweat store for wonderful bread and rolls, which keep fine in the freezer. Please don’t feel any guilt about a few eating-out dollars! Children should go out to eat, or they won’t know how to behave on their first date. ;) Your thought about bundling cable and internet is wise. I have DSL internet and free local TV, so I was able to go from a cable/internet bill of $75/month to $35. Now if there was only a way to get cell phone bills in that amount!
I am also wondering if your grocery budget includes household essentials…paper products, toiletries, etc. If so, I can’t wait to read how you do it! Our family (2 adults, 3 teens that eat like adults, 1 8-year-old, and the occasional returning college student or two) can barely make it on a monthly budget of $800. That includes food, all toiletries and paper products, Wednesday night suppers at church, and the very rare restaurant food. I would love to reduce that dollar amount!
It does, but I was pretty well stocked with toilet paper and toiletries this month, so I hardly bought anything.
We’re not huge paper product users, so that’s not a big expense for us.
The teens will up your food budget in a hurry. My pre-teen eats a ton, when she’s going through a growth spurt. I can see the difference in the grocery bill!
Ditto on the grocery plan. Can’t wait! We’re currently spending about 450 on groceries + 150 eating out so almost $600 in food related expenses. We are a family of 4 so hoping to cut down a bit on this expense. Please let me know how you do it!!
Great post, Lynnae.
I think whenever you start tracking your expenses, you’ll always realize your food costs are high. This might move people to eating fast food all the time, but shouldn’t we sacrifice cost for quality food?