February Financial Recap

It's the end of the month and payday for me.  Using Mint.com has been an awesome way to track my spending! I do occasionally have to re-categorize some payments, but it's easy to do.  For a short month, February was sure full of extra money going out! I spent $974 more than January.  A lot of it was planned and in the budget, but it still feels like a big OUCH! to see it all layed out in a colored pie chart.

I spent $89 more on groceries/household supplies/takeout than in January.  Since I shopped for 2 weeks last Saturday, that would account for that extra amount, as normally I wouldn't have shopped for 2 weeks and the rest of what I spent would have come out of this pay period.  BUT, our take out expense category was even more ridiculous in February! $238 - for junk food! I'm really going to work this month on getting that down. I am proud of myself that since last Friday night (Thursday is always a take out dinner night) I have made dinner at home every night and plan to tonight again - and this is with feeling like crap most of the week. Tomorrow will be the only time in the past week we will have had take out and it should only be $11 for tomorrow, as I only get it for Dh.  The rest of us eat at home.  I did increase my budget for March's groceries/household supplies, though. Now that I'm tracking it I can see that I have been totally under budgeting what I actually spend each month. Even though I upped my budget last month, it was still not enough.  February's total for groceries/household supplies/take out was $1184.  I have got to figure out ways to get this down down down.  That is my goal for March - to figure out some way.  Drastic measures don't work on my family - especially with Dh.  He likes to eat and he likes specific brands, etc.

I spent $377 more on Auto category than a normal month.  $150 of this was due to paying extra on my car payment. I have no idea why I did this. This goes to my mom and I guess I was thinking since I got my sick leave bonus last month I should pay extra to her. I really should have just stuck it into my EF savings.  But at least it's $150 that reduced my loan balance and not $150 spent on "stuff".  The rest was car tabs due on 3 cars.

Home repairs was $183, but about $125 of that was the little closet make-over project for Dd. I do plan to take a picture of it and post, but we have been unable to find the other drape panel she wants! Frustrating - we found what she wanted at Walmart but they only had one panel in stock, we bought it and hoped to either find it at another Walmart, online or find it re-stocked.  No luck yet.

I spent $130 on clothing in February for the kids and a one-time $60 fee for Dd's sports fee to school. Another $183 was lumped into the "shopping" category - which was things Dh bought for out in the shop - $125 for the racking shelves system and misc stuff.  And he is going to try and sell the extra racking, so some of that money should come back to me.

This month should not see as many of those "one time" expenses, other than our landscaping project, which is coming out of the $1500 set aside for this (it is not in my EF balance).  My EF/Savings balance is now sitting at $2,816.27!!!