DD’s Monthly Expenses – November 2008

I can’t believe its December already…where does the time go?

Anyway…

You long time readers out there will recall that I’m charting my family’s monthly expenses in an effort to see where our money is really being spent. Below are the results from November:

• $830.00 – Mortgage
• $639.00 – Daycare
• $400.53 – Groceries
• $245.95 – Household Misc
• $239.32 – Medical Bills
• $135.00 – Student Loan
• $129.43 – Electricity
• $115.75 – Phone & Internet
• $106.79 – Dinning Out
• $ 79.39 – Hair stuff
• $ 49.02 – Gas
• $ 44.52 – Shoes
• $ 35.00 – Grad School App
• $ 24.00 – Tennis
• $ 20.00 – Clubs
• $ 15.00 – Donations
• $ 15.00 – Kid’s Stuff
• $  5.30 – Videos

For a grand total of…$3129.00

This is much lower than last month, but last month’s total was misleading.  But I am glad to see a number close to $3,000.

Biggest Budget Busters:

1. $245.95 Household Misc – This is about double of what it should be.  Even with the receipts, I can’t believe it’s so high.  The envelope system can’t get here fast enough.
2. $239.32 – Medical Bills – Can’t we be healthy for once?  The sad thing is we were. This total is mainly from a prescription and a dental bill.
3. $106.79 – Dinning Out – We were doing really good in this category until last week.  I think we ate out 5 times in 7 days.  Throw in Thanksgiving and we were real porkers.

Biggest Budget Breakthroughs:

1. $400.53 – Groceries –  I’m impressed by how we did in this category.  We even had two special occasions (election night gathering & Thanksgiving) to deal with this month.
2. $ 49.02 – Gas – This is a combination of the low prices of gasoline and the fact that we didn’t really go anywhere this month.
3. $  5.30 – Videos – I’m marking this here because even though the total is higher than what it was in my old Netflix days.  The reason I’m happy about this category is that we took advantage of a local deal and rented 5 movies over Thanksgiving break.  Too bad we only got to watch 4 of them.

Overall I’m pleased with this expense report.  Of course next months will be much higher thanks to Christmas, but hopefully we can stick to our budget so it doesn’t get out of hand.

Until next time,

-DD