Okay, we were under budget on a lot of items. I always like seeing that gasoline amount come in under budget, and no major car repairs.
We went over budget on Beauty/Sundries by $9.96. The main item to push me over in this category is the purchase of the Shikai lotion which I totally love. I have been trying to find a natural lotion that didn’t contain parabens and I found this one at Amazon, at a discounted price, four 8-ounce tubes for only $15.71. BTW, the shampoo is some that Mr. A bought as he does not do no-poo like me. Although I am hoping to try this Make Your Own Shampoo recipe by Mrs. Money over at Ultimate Money Blog and see if he’ll use that instead of the cheapie store brand with the endocrine disruptors and harsh detergents.
We went over on Groceries by $172.01. Here’s the breakdown on where the money was spent in my grocery categories:
The Credit Card Interest is about to drive me nuts. We have to do something to lower that.
There is no budget allocated for Office Supplies, hence the “overage” in that category.
We went over in Utilities because January is the month where we have to pay our yearly dues to the community well.
And that’s the January monthly budget report.
I hope to have February’s report available much earlier next month.
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Did you buy some cows?! LOL
$265 just seems high for meat but I am out of the loop probably.
I sooo need to do something like this. You’ve inspired me!
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
March 6th, 2010 at 8:10 pm
Hi Mrs. Money, no we didn’t buy any cows. LOL. We have actually raised calves from being a few days old and had them butchered, and it costs an arm and a leg to do in the desert when you don’t have a pasture to let them graze in. About the dollar amount of the meat… I am not at my own computer right now, so I can’t go back and look in Quicken, but I think the meat purchases do run around that much each month. Mr. A likes to eat mostly meat… I try to stick with a serving size, but of course our boys also eat larger than normal amounts of meat. I am now curious to see how much we spend a month on average. That means I shouldn’t stop tracking the categories just yet (I have thought about just putting everything under GROCERIES and maybe that would make my receipt entry go faster). I’m watching your March Spending Tracker post to see how much money you two end up spending this month.
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Only 1.98 for Misc.! That is great! Too many budgets get broken by this category!
[Reply]
Mrs. Accountability Reply:
March 6th, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Daddy Paul: I have a big amount in Misc ($100) but I try not to use that category unless I don’t get a receipt from my husband and have no idea what the item was, or sometimes the grocery store receipts are so cryptic, for example, when I have no idea what RTEGS SEIPTB is… then I just put it into Misc.
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