Explanation of Income:
Gift: Reppin’ a solid $50 in birthday cash. People must like me less as I get older, ’cause I use to get a couple hundred dollars each b-day.
Salary: My take home pay from the day job. I get paid every two weeks, so this usually doesn’t fluctuate too much. It was about $700 higher than it normally is, because I had to travel to Texas for work for three weeks and got some sweet overtime pay. I budget my expenses around two pay periods per month, but in October I will be getting three paychecks…can’t wait!
Tutoring: Something I do in my free time to make a little extra cash flow. As you can tell, the summer months are not generous to this category at all. Hopefully things start picking back up in the next few weeks as the kiddies head back to the classroom.
Explanation of Expenses:
Auto: Any maintenance and fuel costs associated with my car. This excludes my car insurance. Having a work vehicle totally helps minimize my gas bill. $36 for July is A-Okay by me.
Clothing: The $50 b-day gift money I was given came with a stipulation. I had to spend it at Nordstrom. I went $10 over my gift allowance, but walked away with three rather “trendy” shirts.
Dining: The dollar bills I be droppin’ on at San Diego’s finest/cheap restaurant. A couple dates with the girlfriend and I’m a couple dollars poorer. Well worth every penny spent though.
Groceries: My goal is to keep my dining and grocery expenses at about $250 each month. Droppin’ $88 at the grocery store plus $69 on dining, keeps me well under my $250 food goal. It was easy to stay under budget this month because I was on a business a business trip the first two weeks of the month, so those meals were all reimbursable.
Insurance: Includes car and renters insurance. Sometimes I just want someone to steal something from my apartment so that I can actually use my renters insurance and feel like I’m gettin’ my money’s worth. I crashed my car two years ago and definitely got my monies worth in that accident… oops.
Interest expense: This is my school loan . I have a monthly obligation of $178, but I decided at the end of March, after some wise words from you PF bloggers, that I needed to throw at least $1K at Sallie Mae each month. Five months later, and I’m staying true to that commitment…and as of recently am considering increasing my payments even more.
Travel: As mentioned earlier, I was on business from June 25th to July 15th. The $3,680 you see here is all of the expenses that were associated with my travel. The reimbursement section of my expenses was the reimbursement I received upon my return.
The overall total at the bottom is the cash I had leftover after all my expenses. I brought home a very solid $1,750 in July. Not too shabby considering I am paying five times my student loan obligation. Shoot, as long as this section is positive I’m happy, ’cause it’s all discretionary income.
* Are you wondering why I post the previous month’s expenses a couple weeks late? I use quicken to track my spending and I have to wait until the end of the billing cycle before I can download these transactions. I know I could manually add each expense as it comes, but I am entirely too lazy for that. Thanks for checking in and if you got any comments, tips, or advice I’d be more than happy to hear it. *
Looking good! I feel ya on the birthday thing… I'll have to see how much I get (if anything!) for turning 26 next month.
I can see why you are peeved in the tutoring business. LOL.
And least you get money on your birthday. I don't ever see a dime. But I get a good dinner. 🙂
And sweet on the SL! 5x's the amount. It will be gone in no time.
Job well done!
Dang boy! You're left with $1750? You're not going to tell us what you did with it?! Savings, I'm assuming? I suppose that's what the net worth posts are for. I'm so nosy. 🙂 Looks like it was a pretty awesome month!
Ninja-rific!
Man, I see tutoring has been just as unkind to you in July as it was to me. I made $15. PATHETIC!
Re: Delay because of Quicken
If you're not patient enough to wait until the end of the month, you can use Mint.com. It is an online free alternative to Quicken or MS Money that automatically imports new transactions from bank websites.
Maybe you can save more by cutting cost when travelling.