Well, today is the end of my first half of December pay period and I did very well tracking my expenses. I am over $40 on takeout, but under $32 on groceries. I am over $5 on gas, but $40 of that I will be reimbursed for as business mileage. I didn't budget anything for pet expenses (need to add that to my monthly budget) but spent $24 on 8 month supply of flea drops for the cat. I also added $50 to a budget category for home maintenance/repairs type stuff. I spent $84 - home maintenance, curtains for Dd's bedroom and more xmas lights for outside and the tree I bought last year on clearance (it's white, so I needed white cabled lights). I'll have to see after a few months if $50 is a reasonable estimate, as I've never paid attention to how much is spent on this since it's not a "regular" expense (like buying groceries each week), it just comes up as needed.
I'm going to end up about $120 over on my Xmas present budget, but it was kind of a guess and of course we ended up spending a bit more on the kids than planned, but I'm not unhappy with $120 over. I have the money and nothing was charged on credit cards and I did stay within my budget on all the other family members gifts.
All in all I think I did pretty well estimating so far and am pleased with myself :-)
I think you did pretty good too! December is always a more expensive month for most of us, so I think we need to ease up on ourselves & pat ourselves on the back every once in a while! ;)
ReplyDeleteThat's great that you were able to pay the overage without charging it to the cards, though! So not too shabby.
ReplyDelete