Browsing tag: spending

These roundups include mine/joint expenses, but not any of T’s blow money, which also includes any work lunches and the odd work expense.

Clothes and grooming – Mostly my new Trilogy Everything Balm – a godsend and my new holy grail of skincare. Packed with natural oils (including rosehip), it’s totally transformed my parched skin. It’s also good for the rest of the body – dry spots, eczema etc. I’ve heard people compare it to Elizabeth Arden eight-hour cream, even.

Debt repayments – T trucking along with repaying me, albeit slowly as his hours fluctuated this month.

Dining and bars – A little higher than usual; we had some wicked Indian food at Diwali, dumplings and soup at hidden gem/diamond in the rough New Flavour restaurant; wonton soup when I was sick; and other miscellany.

Entertainment – Two ridiculously overpriced drinks at Vector Arena on Metallica night, our Fatso subscription, and a rogue $20 withdrawal I can’t quite place.

Groceries – We shop on weekends. It was a five weekend month. Amazingly, we’re right on target taking that into consideration.

Holidays – T’s charter fishing trip I booked for his birthday.

Home expenses – Replacing our TV/laptop.

Mystery shopping – This month included purchases of a meal and drinks out and a long necklace from Max (reimbursed, obviously).

Savings – as usual, only counts T’s and “extra” savings on my part, not regular savings (44% of my net, woot!)

T fun – Xbox subscription, which had to be paid by credit card.

Utilities – ever so slightly lower than usual thanks to our AECT dividend which was credited to our power account, but almost made up for by higher cellphone/Sky TV bills.

Vehicle and transport – $100 new car battery, $101.40 bus, leaving less than $200 on gas which is nothing short of primo.

So far, frugal November isn’t off to the best start. We’re talking $50 on clothes – I found the perfect pair of summer sandals, and T has to buy some shirts for work. Also, our quarterly contents insurance payment is due. It also looks like some car expenses will be rearing their ugly head – necessary but painful.

Still, who can dwell on the negative when the weather is this glorious???

Clothing – two skirts, two tops, two pairs of sneakers, running shoes. Handbag!

 

 

Debt –Trucking along with repaying me; should be done by the end of the year.

Dining and bars – Higher than usual, we’ve had some good meals out this month. Japanese. Malaysian. And some good ol fashioned takeaways.

Entertainment – Xbox, movies (at the cinema).

Groceries – There’s no getting round it, this is high. Prices are going up, and we’re eating better and more interesting/varied meals. We did stock up in the last week, so going into October slightly lower. But still. Dairy has already leaped up since the GST increase, and no doubt so have other things if I pay closer attention…perhaps $130 / week isn’t so realistic anymore?

Gifts – included my purchasing of our anniversary present ($95). Did not include T’s mum’s birthday present (more later).

Holidays – Our weekend away (accommodation plus food). Also includes $141.30 on his birthday: $52.30 on food plus $89 games. But he repaid $50 of that.

Medical – Mainly my contacts. Ouch.

Savings – As always, doesn’t reflect the whole picture, just “extra” savings, and T’s. I usually aim for $1k (which is more than 20 per cent) , but have no idea if I made it this month. Repentant, I will not let anything slip by me in October.

T fun – Stuff purchased online through the credit card, paid back by him. He also randomly bought one lunch out of this account.

Utilities – Right on target…

Vehicle – This month saw something like $65 go toward maintenance/repairs, $72 on my bus fares and the rest gas. He uses a tank a week – between $50 and $70. The commute is not all that long given he doesn’t have to deal with peak hours, but he does tons of other driving around to see friends etc. I’m starting to think he should handle gas entirely; it might get him to be more conscious of that.

Uncoded – an extra $112 for his mum’s birthday gift and the rest for new cellphone.

Also, this money thing is doing my head in. T used his own card for some car repairs/maintenance. So we ended up making some of HIS purchases from the main account to balance it out. So here I was, categorising food purchases as “vehicle”. He also spent some more on work gear out of his own pocket, which isn’t reflected here.

Extra income: Totalled $1172.61 this month.
$467.11 lump sum as negotiated by my union (mostly saved, just over a quarter spent on, er, contacts, pillows and running shoes);
$140 for one of my Metallica tickets (spent on T’s mum’s present/new phone)  $85 from a focus group (spent on clothes and beauty);
$15.50 for our old washing machine (gave to T to spend);
$465 from my side job (split between T’s birthday, our anniversary present – an early purchase – and my travel fund).

I really do spend a ridiculous amount of time managing our money. It’s lucky I’m a nerd.

Carnivalistic fun

Thanks to Canadian Finance Blog for my inclusion in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance!

A peek into my psyche

Me in Millions interviewed me for her resurrected Monday Morning Inspiration series this week. Check it out!

July was a bit of an aberration, thanks to my birthday. August was plain out of control, what with T starting work and the extra expenditure on groceries for lunches, gas, and work expenses. And clothes – while he gets a uniform, he still has to supply his own pants, and he was in dire need of some other new things. I’m serious when I tell you that he has probably no more than four items of any kind of clothing at one time. And most of them – tees, singlets, shoes – are worn out, damaged or lost in a quarterly rotation, by which time we have to hit the shops again.

Anyway. I finally had a chance to sit down and take a look at our accounts. While in some respects we did better than I thought, in others….

HIGHLIGHTS

Clothes: I’ve touched on that. He still needs a fair few more things, but he’s got the essentials for now.

Debt: Paying me back for the Visa. I guess once that’s done and dusted, it’ll be time to aggresively tackle his very last debt.

Dining: Doing good on eating out! Just haven’t had the time or energy lately. T has his own spending money, but sometimes eats out on the joint account. I’m not sure whether to categorise that in ‘dining out’, or relegate it to the status of extra “fun” money (like I did this month). I mean, if I buy lunch on that card, I call it dining, but I don’t have separate blow money. It probably makes the most sense just to call it dining out from now.

Fees: this month were high, thanks to the six monthly Visa and True Rewards charge

Groceries: A five week month, yes, but jeepers! Still, I did say we might ease our limit a little. We definitely bought a lot of spices this month, a few non-food items, plus more food for work lunches, and things like cheeses etc.

Home: Bought an external hard drive, finally. Plus a planter box and some plants.

Mystery shopping: A meal and drinks out, plus shaving cream and a face mask from Lush. The latter smelled luscious but inflamed my skin after a second use. (I thought their products were pretty natural, but I’m still seeing glycol and stearic acid listed…hmmm?) Thankfully didn’t pay out of pocket for that.

Saving: With T back in work, I managed to save $1000 from my day job, plus another $461. (This number’s never right due to the way I manage my cashflow. And I don’t count his savings into this picture.)

Vehicle: UGH. We paid almost $150 for six months of registration, plus something like $300 on repairs and the rest on gas / my bus fares. Our poor car is still falling apart – the damp issue is still an issue, we may need a new battery, and the backlights on the dash aren’t working.

Extra income: I netted $629.30 this month, mostly thanks to my tax refund (the rest came from tutoring, mystery shopping and a cheque from Smilecity). Most of that I saved (or put towards our hard drive). I’m also still waiting on some outstanding invoices to be paid…and really wish they’d hurry up! My travel fund (and bills account thanks to recent car troubles) could use the boost.

Rent: It was clearly a three-fortnight month.

Home expenses: Our washing machine died. We got a replacement from the Salvation Army – well worth it. Of course, for that price, you can’t expect miracles. Like the fact that it doesn’t seem to fully spin dry. Annoying.

Insurance: Another quarterly contents cover payment.

Vehicle: Needed a service. Thankfully, T can change oil and all that jazz. And lots of petrol.

Entertainment: A couple of DVDs out, my guitar part, a watch repair and earring for T (didn’t know what else to categorise them as. No joke, he came home one night with a hole in his ear. That’s the kind of shit his friends do, apparently, reopen old piercings). A cheap movie ticket ($4) from grabone plus cheap ($10 each) passes to Waiwera; I’ve never been and can’t wait to go. Oh yeah, and the kicker: 3 Paramore tickets, although 2 of those were really gifts rather than entertainment.

Dining: Pretty average, and about as low as it goes. I ate three lunches out this month (can’t remember the last time i didn’t bring lunch to work) and somehow kept it under $20. Another $50 or so on two dinners out, and the rest seemingly on random food for T while out gallivanting around during the weeks.

Events: I counted all birthday related spending as an event. $180 odd of that was on the camera, the rest, food and drink. Money well spent.

Clothing: A spiffy wool coat for the bf, much needed (his one and only sweatshirt is, i believe, in his brother’s car with no prospects of being returned soon. Thankfully, he’s actually taking care of the jacket. It’s by far the nicest garment he owns)

As previously noted, I didn’t make my goal of saving 20 per cent this month. Amazingly, though, I was less than $20 off at $640. And even more surprising, despite basically spending blindly, we evened out. Despite all the extra gas and T’s random food purchases/personal spending, it looks like our total lack of an entertainment/eating out budget – barring my birthday – made up for it.

In terms of extra income, I netted a whopping $18.60 (mystery shopping). That’s because I’m waiting till later this month for a reimbursement. I also received two $10 vouchers earned from doing online surveys; one for Rebel Sport and the other for Hoyts Cinemas.

So, not too horrendous, considering! Hello, August.

Groceries: are really high but I think this was a 5-week month, which explains it.

Entertainment: Metallica tickets – there are some things I won’t hesitate to splurge on, and frugality be damned – and a heavily discounted pass for a fishing charter trip which will either be my birthday present to T, or something he does on a weekend and gets some money from friends to contribute to covering the cost.

Dining -I guess there was a bit of socialising – a couple of nights out, plus the worst lunch ever after an epic afternoon of market research (we made $170 that day and spent $28 on the saddest, most pathetic Thai food ever. It enraged me, I tell you.) Didn’t exactly help the black hole of overdraftness…Clearly, I need to stop whining about having no fun budget and start walking the talk.

Vehicle: I spent  a little more than anticipated on my bus passes, just over $100. Why? That includes extra trips into town for a networking event, plus pub quizzes wit hcolleagues from my side job (also perhaps a form of networking?) plus car parts to the tune of at least $30.

Utilities: I always forget that we have pay TV now, and this is right on target (well, except for going over our internet and being charged extra :@)

Medical: My eye exam plus contact lens solution.

Clothes: Coat-slash-jacket, plus new face wash. Words can’t express how much I love and wear my last two purchases (will have to take a photo when I get my hands on a camera) – my black boots and grey jacket have already probably paid for themselves.

This month I made an additional $163.90 in income. Although the majority of that went towards getting us out of overdraft, $20 went into the bills account and $15 to clothes and grooming (cleanser + a pack of hairties – now that my hair is getting longer, it drives me insane at night).

Financial goals for June: Get started with Kiva (that fulfils my charity goal) and figure out a plan to deal with the CC balance.

So, lots of spending going on…

Vehicle: We paid for three months of registration, plus new tyres and T did a service on the car. It’s due for a warrant this month, and there’s a couple of other things we’d like to fix up on it. Plus, it was chewing gas for a few weeks there :@ but changing the tyres seems to have sorted that out.

Food and groceries: That’s five weeks of groceries rather than four, but it’s still a little high. Oh well, not much to do there really, except make sure we get everything we need to avoid mid-week runs to the supermarket. Incidentally, it turns out buying three 2L milk bottles is cheaper than buying two 3L ones. Plus, they fit better in the fridge, and make it easier for T to pace his insane milk consumption. Win, win and win.

Clothing: T bought a new pair of shoes.

Entertainment: About half of this was our night out to see Alice in Wonderland 3D.

Dining: Erm, yeah, lots of eating out. Brunches, lunches, socialising with friends (all worth it, though) plus some fast food fails. Let’s aim to get this down to $200 – the lowest we’ve ever managed – next month.

Spending money: T had some flush weeks (he usually gets $40 a week), although it looks like he had more on two occasions.

Tax: My “overdue” tax.

Home expenses: two weeks bond, obviously, plus moving expenses other bits and pieces we needed to get now we’re back living on our own.

Utilities: low, as our final phone/internet bill turned out as a credit, and our final power bill will come out of our bond at the old place. Plus, I still had plenty of cell phone credit from that focus group in February. This would have been even lower, but we now officially have Sky TV.

This month I did something a little different and tracked every single expense by hand. I just wanted a really accurate picture of our spending, and although it started off kinda fun, I soon fell behind and it became more of a chore. I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss anything off – here’s hoping – and certainly nothing major. What was nice was having the flexibility to make up categories of my own! It inspired me to finally get my butt into gear and add three new classifications in my online banking tracker (you’re allowed to add four of your own maximum).

• We’ll have his car loan paid off this month, and I can’t wait! There’s nothing worse than paying interest on something that you no longer even HAVE.
• It looks like he blew of a lot fun money, but $50 of that was for his ticket to a Shapeshifter gig, which accounts for nearly half of it.
• Misc. items include donations, a bug bomb for our room, and a haircut for him.
• Grocery spending looks REALLY good this month! Dining looks in line at just over $30 a week, although T is averaging a similar amount in lunch money.  I try to corral him into making SOME of his own lunches, but it doesn’t always happen. He also doesn’t always have access to kitchen facilities if he’s working on sites, so that narrows down options.
• I bought a lot of things this month for various mystery shops – Lotto tickets, some goodies from Lush, pizza, and three meals and a beer. I’m only waiting on about $60 in reimbursements at this stage.

In extra income, I made $355 from my second job (which went towards our Waiheke trip) and netted $166.41  from mystery shopping after purchases. That went towards a pretty summer dress ($30) and the rest was split between our ‘bills’ account and savings.

GOALS RECAP:

Save 20 per cent – DONE

One new recipe each week – Major, major fail.

Run once a week – Done, barring last week when we went away… but at least I got some swimming in!

Make an upwards career move – Done, to an extent. I’m still not counting this as fully achieved.

Donate to charity – Done in cash, canned food to the foodbank, dollars earned through an online survey site, and some old clothes for a child cancer appeal.

As great as this week was, it didn’t come cheap! We’re over a hundred dollars in the red, which means some tightening up for the rest of the month. (Didn’t help that we already went over during Christmas, thanks to a last minute present and work lunches for T). As a first step towards making up for it, I’ve cancelled two secret shopper assignments – both with no payment, just reimbursement for a purchase I really don’t need and would have to spend over the alloted amount for at least one of them.

Let’s add up the damages:
$90 plus on food alone (waiting for a couple charges to clear)
$17 on mask and snorkel hire for me (we borrowed most of the gear from a friend)
And we stopped in at the honey centre, where we bought a $3.95 jar (but wow, SO much fresher and cheaper than the supermarket stuff!)

Plus of course the $153 hotel, plus $10 parking… and $123 on groceries.