August Money Review

As previously mentioned, this was a bad money month. As a reminder, our plan is to take our income, subtract $500 for savings, pay all of our expenses, and send the leftover amount to debt. Here’s a rundown of how we ended up for August:

Income minus $500 transfer to savings minus all the money we spent this month = $1.92.

Yes. One dollar and ninety two cents.

Here are a few examples of where our money went:

$500 – Transfer to savings (I have to keeping typing that to remind myself that we did not spend EVERY penny we made.)

$270.60 – Eating out. I’m serious. And keep in mind that I brought my lunch to work every single day in August. Can you imagine what I was spending before I was “frugalized”? It scares me.

$707.37 – Getting ready for school, such as new shoes, clothes, supplies, school registration, etc.

We did have one other big payment this month, but that came out of a separate bank account – not the one we operate out of – so I didn’t count it. But I will have to reimburse that account next month.

These numbers do not look good, I realize. I keep in mind, though, that had we not been keeping track of our expenses, we would have spent that additional $500 and then some! There were many things we chose not to do this month just because we knew it was going to be a tight money month with those outrageous school expenses.

I don’t think I’ll bother using that $1.92 as a extra payment toward a debt. I’d rather keep it to remind myself of just how close we came to diving into savings. I look forward to having a SUPER SEPTEMBER!

The Dave Ramsey Plan - Month 1

July was our first month of working toward paying off our debts. Last night after our “budget meeting”, the extra amount being sent toward debt is $800. II expected more, but I can deal with that. 800 is better than zero.

By keeping track of every penny, here are some things we found out about how we spend money:

• We are still spending way too much on eating out. In July we spent $161.36. That doesn’t include eating out on vacation because Pool Boy’s business paid for all non-hotel vacation expenses.
• “Fun” expenses (hotel on vacation, golfing, book stores, clothes, etc.) were too high, coming in at $668.61.
• We spent $528.32 on groceries, which I didn’t think was too bad for a family of four. We made small trips all month just to get milk, bread, etc. Toward the end of the month, we did one big trip to Super Target to stock up on groceries. I love that place for groceries!

We actually had a larger amount that could have done toward debt at the end of this month, but then we figured in the following:

• $500 will remain in savings each month, so we subtracted that out.
• Property taxes are due in September, so we subtracted that amount out.
• We did not use any of Pool Boy's business income because he's going to pay for his mower at the end of the summer.

Next month we’ll have back to school expenses: registration, shoes, supplies, etc., so I expect we’ll end up with about the same amount available to go toward our debt.

Living Like No One Else!