DD’s Monthly Expenses – June 2009 – The Grocery Breakthrough

I can’t believe the year is half over. Summer is flying by!

For any new readers just joining us, I track my family’s monthly expenses.   Below is the tally for June 2009:

• $1038.54 – Mortgage
• $664.10 – Health Insurance
• $618.00 – Daycare
• $311.25 – Groceries
• $215.00 – Student Loan
• $173.34 -Hair Care
• $107.77 – Medical
• $83.97 – Electric
• $81.69 – Tennis
• $81.06 – Dinning Out
• $69.62 – Phone/Internet
• $65.79 – Household Misc
• $56.94 – Cosmetics
• $54.77 – Dog
• $53.32 – Utilities
• $52.02 – Kid’s Care
• $46.34 – Kid’s Fun
• $39.29 – Gas
• $37.54 – Books
• $30.74 – 4th of July Party
• $27.00 – Donations
• $9.51 – Video Rentals
• $8.88 – Clothes

Total Expense = $3917.59

YEAY!!!   We finally met our goal of being under $4,000!

Biggest Budget Busters:

1. $1038.54 – Mortgage – I normally pay $830/month, but my escrow account was too low, so I had to pay in a little extra.  I’ll write more about this in another post.
2. $173.34 -Hair Care – I wish I could say that this is all for Mrs DD.  But it’s not, half of it is for me.  I use Nioxin products and they are pretty spendy.
3. $107.77 – Medical – I’m putting this one here because $60 of this is for an eye exam for Mrs DD.  She only went because I was convinced that she was near sighted.  But the Dr. said she is A-OK.  Whoopsie.

Biggest Budget Breakthroughs:

1. $311.25 – Groceries – Yet another all time low in this category.  Not that long ago we were close to $500/month.
2. $65.79 – Household Misc – After reading the comments from my “what is misc?” post, I decided that I’d try to narrow this down a little.  That’s why there are a few new categories this time (cosmetics, kids care).
3. $39.29 – Gas – Thanks to the nice weather which lets me ride my bike everywhere, we only had to fill up the van once this month.

It’s hard to believe but I have been writing for The Happy Rock for a year now.  That means I finally have 12 months of figures to play with.

Let’s have some fun with the numbers!

• We’ve spent a total of $51,036.90 in the past 12 months. YOWSERS!
• 20% of that went towards our mortgage ($10,168.54)
• 16.5% of our expenses has gone to daycare ($8,449)
• 15.5% was spent on either Health Insurance or Medical bills (last 6 months)
• 12.2% ($6,232.02)was spent on food (groceries & dinning out)
• We love spending money on the dog ($550.85), but we love spending it on Tennis even more ($552.44).
• An example of life in South Dakota…Our lowest electric bill – $83.97(June).  Our highest – $484.69(Jan).
• We’ve spent more on our hair ($350.73) than we did on clothes($313.36).  Unless you also include shoes ($224.11).
• We spent $197.86 on Books, Magazines, Movies,and Videos.  And $180 on Pearl Jam alone!!!

Now let’s see how close to average we were (thanks to Get Rich Slowly for this chart, who got it from Visual Economics).

How come I’m not surprised we spent more than normal 🙁

I have to admit that it took me a while to get used to people nit-picking my consumer choices. But now that I’ve been doing it awhile I find it quite valuable.   Not only does it help me with accountability, but I also get loads of helpful advice from you guys.  I thank you for that.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve really enjoyed the last 12 months.  I’m planning on running a series of “Follow ups” to give some updates on a few previous issues that I have written about.

Do you have any requests?

Until next time,

-DD