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January totals - First Honest Attempt at Budgeting/Tracking

January 31st, 2008 at 04:50 pm


I just responded to the post right before this one listing a positive balance of $3.44 at month end. We did not incur any credit card debt.

Groceries for month for family of seven/two dogs/turtle $534.99 (food, personal care, household products all included). High because on the 29th I shopped for ten days. Feb will be lower.

Auto: Gasoline $160 (had hoped this would be lower given amount I didn't drive, but there is still a 1/2 tank in the surviving car) Repairs to burned out car $470.16 (may be recoverable in small claims court if fire was result of botched brake job)

Bills (utilities and student loan repayment)was $651.39.

I did contribute $550 to 401(k) and IRA, $135 to education, and $200 to Health Savings Account. All on automatic deposits.

Interest paid to mortgage: $1,350, amount to principle $380.

All in all, I'm hopeful about contributing to the savings account next month. I did also pay $200 deposit for our trip in May.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comments »

1 Responses to “January totals - First Honest Attempt at Budgeting/Tracking”

  1. ceejay74 Says:
    January 31st, 2008 at 07:02 pm 1201806160
    1201806160

    Great job! I keep a running spreadsheet in Google Docs. I have another spreadsheet of fixed and general budgetary facts, and I paste it into my actual "number crunch" document in semimonthly chunks: 1st to 15th of the month and 16th to the end of the month. Then I tweak the variable numbers as I find out about them, and can see how my bottom line is doing. I copy my online checking account balance into the top of the spreadsheet every day. I have a grocery/household line item, so when we charge something to the debit card I subtract that from the grocery/household total. That way I can see how much money we have left for that 15-day period. You can check out sample "Bills and Budget" and "Number Crunch" docs on my blog, though I don't update them regularly (Google Docs is the only place I update the info daily).

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