Why has it taken me until the 12th of August to post the July money report?  Could it be the shame?  The embarrassment? Or the fact that I have to admit to you guys that I spent a lot more money than I earned in July?

Nah, not really.  I’ve just been busy.  Forgive me.

It is true that I spent a more than I earned last month, breaking the cardinal rule of personal finance.  But I had the money saved to spend, so I don’t think it should really count against me.  That being said, it’s no surprise that my net worth dipped.  Actually, neither the spending nor the decline in net worth was much of surprise, in fact, they were inevitable and I will probably continue to trend that way through August and September.

July income: $2,991.56

July expenses: $7,738.22

Here’s where all my money went in July:

Housing: $1299.50

$600 for rent.  $99.50 for housing expenses related to my investment property.  Another $600 to pay for utilities which I had not been paying for since February when I moved into the new place.  It was kind of a pain to have to cough up all this at once, especially because my buddy the landlord was basically just lazy and didn’t have his stuff together until July, but it is what it is, and he hadn’t been charging us for utilities so we needed to pay our share.  Going forward the rent (for August and September – then I move again), rent will be $640 and will include all utilities.

Eating Out: $245.43 or $125.43  (depending on how you categorize it)

Bird had two college friends come into town from out of state for her wedding shower/bachelorette party.  They were in town all weekend, so one night we all went out to dinner and I picked up the tab for $120.  I don’t really feel like that should count as eating out, more like a gift.  Either way, I’m happy because these numbers aren’t terrible compared to some of the previous months.  All told, I ate out 9 times in July.

Miscellaneous: $227.46

Totally random stuff.  Airport parking, $6.  Haircuts, $16 and $17.  Bike helmet, $59.  Books, $3.56.  Oil change: $31.44.  And a whole bunch of other random little stuff.  I’d like to see a decrease in this category in August.  All the little stuff really does add up.

Student Loan: $266.80

I made an extra $150 payment  just so I could bring the remaining balance under $10,000.  It was worth it!  This loan, my only non-mortgage loan, is now sitting at $997.66.

Groceries: $120.82

$120 isn’t bad for a month of groceries, but it looks like I made six trips to the grocery store in July.  I bet I could lower my monthly costs if I went a few less times.

Gifts: $226.43

Sent flowers to Bird at work, bought Bird a book, bought Bird’s birthday gift (she’ll have her birthday on her honeymoon so I really need to make it an extra special day!)

Gas:  $86.65

Filled up four times in July, though one time it was Bird’s car (maybe that should count as a gift!).  Any time I keep the gas category under a hundred bucks, I’m a happy driver.

Giving (to charity): $245

The usual suspects, no special giving this month.

Entertainment: $69.21

Couple of Red box movies, couple of concert tickets and movie tickets to Harry Potter!

and then there are these two categories:

Wedding: $625

Two hundred dollars came from the wedding fund to pay for bridesmaids shoes.  Another $425 went to paying for paper and for the printing of our invitations.

Honeymoon: $4,325.92

I finally booked the honeymoon and I couldn’t be more excited about it!  Costs includes flights, hotels, tours, etc.  We had budgeted $5,000, so currently we are a little under, but I’m sure we will find a few ways to use up that extra $700 on our trip!

Okay, so that’s July’s wrap up brought to you in the middle of August.

The highlight of June was that Bird and her parent’s made their final contributions to the wedding fund.  Now we are fully funded for this wedding.  Let the spending begin!

As for my normal expenses, everything was pretty much on target this month.  I only spent around $200 eating out.  Proud of myself for that one.  I spent a little more on gas than usual because I had the long trip up to my cabin and some other misc. trips.  I spent $137.50 on gas in June.

There were a few miscellaneous expenses in June including:

• Domain renewal – $10
• Antivirus software renewal – $53.32
• Renewing my tabs – $78

The only things I bought that were wedding related in June were both the wedding bands.

• $24.95 for mine
• $1233 for hers

And they look pretty much the same….well, at least mine is shiny like hers.  The money came out of the wedding fund and we had budgeted for it.  Actually, we had only budgeted $700 for hers, but we will tweak the budget and steal from other areas to make it work.

Every month I keep track of each purchase I make, every dollar I spend.  I track of them in a gmail spreadsheet and I try to categorize them so at the end of every month I can

A) compare my income to my expenses

B) see if there are any categories of spending that are getting out of control

While I’ve continued to track this, I haven’t written a monthly summary since January so it’s about time I get back into the habit.

Housing/Property Taxes:  $754.50

Every month I have to pay the co-owner of my house $99.50 to cover the difference between our mortgage and our rental income.  You can imagine how surprised I was in May when I wrote him a check for $99.50 and he said, “Actually, it’s $754.50 this month because of property taxes.”   We had a major snafu with the bank and the city/county last year which I can’t even really explain but the short story is I owed C a bunch of money in May.  I’m glad it was a 3-paycheck month.

Rent:  $500

Nothing special here.

Wedding:  $500

This was the deposit on the photo booth rental for our wedding reception.

Charitable:  $280

This includes my tithe to church, supporting a friend in the breast cancer 3-day walk, sponsoring my Compassion child, supporting MN public radio and supporting another friend who was doing a fundraiser.  A few of these are recurring every month and a few were one time deals.

Eating Out:  $258.61

Usually I put all my eating out in one category but this month that category was so high that I needed to split it up to make myself feel better.  This category is specifically eating out that I do either by myself or just with Bird.  The kind of eating out you do because you don’t feel like cooking or you don’t have anything for lunch.  Basically, it’s the kind of eating out I would really like to limit.  $258 is just so much.  I can’t believe it.  Granted, I almost always pay when it’s Bird and I because I have the rewards credit card, but still, I ate out by myself or with Bird….10 times in May.  I think we can cut back on that.

Eating Out w/ Friends:  $249.96

I needed to separate this category after seeing that all my eating out added up to more than $500.  That number shocked me, but once I looked into it a little bit, it was more understandable.  Not necessarily acceptable, but understandable.  This category includes times we would be out with friends and I would be feeling generous and decide to pick up the whole tab.  I did that 3 times in May….once for $94.54, once for $84 and once for $71.42.  It’s fun to do and my friends really appreciate it so I’m not complaining about this category, but I think from now on (at least until after the wedding) I will only pay for the whole group once a month or so.

Groceries:  $167.08

After all that eating out, I don’t know when I had time to buy all these groceries, let alone eat them.  I really have no idea what I spent $167 on at the grocery store in May.  I don’t really do budgets, but after May, it seems like it might be a good option to limit all this food spending.  I think I could probably get by on $100 a month for groceries.

Student Loan:  $116.80

Not much to explain.  I pay this same amount every month.  I have been for a long time and I will for a long time to come.  I did make an extra $60 payment on the loan this month just because I felt like it, but that didn’t get recorded on my spreadsheet.  Oops.

Gifts:  $100

Mother’s Day, random gift for Bird and my Mom’s birthday.

Gas:  $75.88

Four fill-ups for $75 in May.  This category started to creep back up in May because gas prices started to creep back up but anytime this category is under $100 I’m a happy guy.

Phone:  $65.92

I’m really starting to enjoy my Blackberry.  I still don’t know if it’s worth the extra money, but since I’m locked in at this point, I’m trying to get my money’s worth.  It’s always fun to check my email wherever I am.  Even more fun when the email informs me there is a new comment on the blog. 

Miscellaneous:  $51.08

The catch-all category.  I had 7 transaction in the misc. category in May….everything from coffee, bike supplies, a haircut and going out for ice cream.

Entertainment:  $42.06

e.g.  Redbox movie, iTunes song, date night at the movies with Bird

Clothing:  $32

I used my $25 gift card that I received from MyPoints to buy clothes at the Gap.

Conclusion:

I was very happy it was a 3-paycheck month.  Granted, two of the largest expenditures were one time things but still I would have liked to save more.  Who am I kidding?  I’d always like to save more!  It wasn’t the worst month ever and overall I’m very happy with it, except for that food spending.  I really want to cut back for June in all three of those food categories.  I might try to ride my bike a few more times to work and hopefully that will help me spend even less on gas.

Not only was it a 3-paycheck month but it was also my birthday.  I received some birthday money and so I had some extra money in my checking account at the end of the month.  With that extra money I made the extra payment to my student loan, I made a $100 contribution to my Roth IRA, I added $200 to my emergency fund and I added $500 to the honeymoon fund (sidebars have been updated).

January was a total blur.  Somewhere along the way I spent about $1,800.  Here’s the breakdown:

$806 – Housing expenses led the way again.  Now that I’m receiving rent, I don’t really have to pay the mortgage because they basically cancel each other out.  $650 of that $800 went towards paying the property taxes that I owed my co-owner.  The other $150 was to cover some final bills and the association fees that the rent doesn’t quite cover.

$233 – Eating out! I can’t believe I spent this much on eating out.  As always, eating out makes up a huge portion of my social life and I often end up paying for Bird and/or other friends.  So it’s not like I just dropped $200 eating out by myself, but as always, I’ll be looking to try to limit this category in February.

$105 – Entertainment.  This includes $32 for Bingo, $27 for tickets (3) to Slumdog Millionaire, $40 for concert tickets and a few other miscellaneous items.

$98 – Gas

And then there were a bunch of other little expenses in a few other categories that all added up.

Notable: I put an extra $25 towards my student loan.  Not an  earth-shattering amount, I know, but every little bit helps.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with my spending in January.  Again, I will make it a goal to limit my eating out expenses, but everything else I am okay with.  In general, I’m going to make it more of a goal to earn more rather than spend less.

I love the Fall and I had a lot of fun in October. Fortunately, all that fun cost me less than all the fun I had in September. Let’s take a look at the breakdown of my October spending in a few major categories:

1. $897 – That’s what I spent on housing-related expenses in October. This includes the mortgage, association dues and all the utilities. This is a fairly static amount every month.
2. $209 - The cost for gas in October.  This was up more than $70 from last month. However, please remember that October included the hunting trip up north which is like a 6 hour drive one way and the trip to the North Shore which also used up a bunch of gas. Hopefully gas prices will continue to fall (under $2 now) and my gas expenses will continue to drop. Another factor will be the coming winter when we tend to hole up inside and try to stay warm. That should help limit my driving.
3. Food! This was the big expense of September (over $400) and I’m really happy to report that food spending was down big time in October. I spent $192 eating out (still too much!) and another $50 on groceries.
4. $300 - I donated this amount to charitable causes in October which included a $20 Christmas gift for Sergio, my Compassion child from Bolivia.
5. I don’t have super specific categories when recording my spending throughout the month, so $250 worth of October expenses ended up be recorded as Miscellaneous. $95 of that was spent on party supplies for the big bonfire party. The rest was really just miscellaneous stuff here and there, though I did also include my $45 cell phone bill in this category.

All in all, I’m fairly pleased with my spending in October. I still need to work on limiting my eating out, but also need to be careful not to limit my social life in the process. There were also several miscellaneous expenses that I could have done without. I will try to limit these types of purchases in November and so far I’m doing pretty well!

I’ve finally had a chance to look back at my expenses for the month of September.  Here is a brief recap:

1. My food spending was out of control!  I spent $137 on groceries, $30 eating out by myself and $247 (!) eating out with friends!

Ouch!  I’ve written before about how most of my social life involves going out to eat with friends, but September was crazy.  Granted, two nights made up almost half of that $247.  I spent $60 on dinner when Bird’s college roommate was in town and I treated the whole group.  I also spent $75 for Bird’s romantic birthday dinner.  I don’t regret either of those nights, but now I’m wishing I could have cut back on some of my other food expenses for the month.

2. I spent $130 on gas in September which is a little bit more than usual.  Hopefully, I can also cut this back in October and gas prices are currently heading lower so that should help.

3. I spent $144 on travel.  I know I said my trip to the Boundary Waters was only $78 but I forgot to add the tank of gas I paid for, which brings the total trip costs to $144 – still totally worth it!

4. Another major category that was unusually high was the gift category.  I spent $128 on gifts in September and most of that was for Bird’s birthday.  I don’t regret it but it’s an outlier because it was a special occasion and my gift giving expenses shouldn’t be anywhere near that amount in October.

5. September was also the first month that I didn’t collect rent from a roommate.  T moved out at the end of August and so my housing expenses increased a bit.  Luckily, the weather cooled off and we have been able to turn off the a/c for the year which should considerably cut our electric bill.

There were a bunch of other miscellaneous expenses for the month but those listed above are the major ones.  October shouldn’t be as expensive and my main goal for the month is to not spend as much on eating out.  We’re only about a week in, but so far so good.

It turns out I never spend as much as money as I think I have in any given month.  After running all the numbers for August, I’m pleasantly surprised to find that I managed to save 16 percent of my income.  Even though that’s my lowest savings rate of the year, I’m still happy because I thought I had spent so much more.

I also managed to add a tiny bit to my net worth.  It now stands at $32,539 which is an increase of 3.5% (I think…math was never my strong suit! ha.)

As usual, gas and eating out cost me a bunch of money.  I’ve decided I’m going to start tracking which eating out is social in nature, as I’m sure that is a large percentage of it and I will try to cut back on the eating out that is merely a convenience.  Also a random expense for August was $250 for six months worth of car insurance.  If I hadn’t had to pay that, I would have been able to save even more money.  Oh well.

I would love to increase my savings rate in September back up into the 20-something percent range, but that’s going to be difficult.  I have a trip to the Boundary Waters coming up next weekend and the girlfriend’s birthday (fyi – I’m going to start calling her Bird) is in the middle of the month.  Towards the end of the month my brothers have their birthday (they’re twins).  So September might be expensive, but I’m really looking forward to it!  Bring it on!

Plus, I already had a no spend day on the 1st!  But then I spent $5.33 on dinner tonight and then renewed a magazine subscription for $25.  So the spending has begun!  However, that $25 covers 3 years of the magazine which is a savings of over 70% off the cover price and it’s a magazine I actually read, so I’m quite pleased with that purchase.

Tomorrow will not be a no-spend day as I’m heading into Uptown after work to have delicious thai food.  Bird’s college roommate and her boyfriend are in town to visit and it’s their first time in Minneapolis so a big group of friends is getting together to hang out and show them a good time.  It shouldn’t be too expensive though because we’re only doing dinner out and then heading back to Bird’s new place for cake and ice cream.  It should be really fun!

As July ended, I knew I had spent much more money than usual.  But once I ran the numbers, I was pleasantly surprised.

I managed to save 23 percent of my income and my net worth actually increased by 8 percent!

With the exception of my housing expenses, my largest expense categories were once again gas and eating out.  I spent $128 on gas in July and $110 on eating out.  Since almost all of my eating out has a social aspect to it, I’m happy with that number.

Other July tidbits:

• Donated 10 percent of my income to charitable causes
• Paid $50 extra to student loan
• Added $150 to emergency fund
• Added $150 to Vanguard Investment fund
• Added $25 to Prosper account
• Added $350 to Roth IRA

I feel like it’s too late in July to do a June update.  That, and I’m too lazy.  You can see in my sidebar that my net worth took quite a hit last month. I think it dropped about 5%, mostly due to the really terrible performance of the stock market.  Oh well, what are you gonna do?

I managed to save something like 20% of my income in June, which isn’t as much as I did the month before but I’m still happy with it.  I spent about $120 in gas and about $110 eating out with friends.  Those are my two largest expense categories except housing.

And here we are halfway through July.  So far I think I’ve managed to keep my spending under control, but I’ve started to hang out with this girl quite a bit lately and my expenses are beginning to add up – but I’m not complaining!

Digging a little deeper into the major May expenditures:

Mortgage – $745
Property Tax – $661
Car Repair – $277
Gas – $138
Student Loan – $120
Groceries – $95
Utilities – $80
Eating Out – $73
Cell Phone – $42

Overall, I’m really pleased with my May spending. The car repair and property taxes were one-time deals that accounted for a big chunk. Gas expenses were high, but perhaps not as high as I thought they might be considering the rise in prices and my longer commute. I’m even happy with my grocery and eating out spending. The others I have listed are are all pretty much fixed. All my other spending for the month was really negligible.
Since this is basically my first month tracking my expenses, I don’t have much to compare to, but it will be interesting to compare next month.