3/11/2014

My Money, My Choices - Level 1, Activity 1

Activity: Complete a Spending Analysis

I've been tracking our spending for a long time, so this task was pretty easy for me to do.  Here was our year-over-year comparison for the last four years, and I've added 2014's average so far.


Groceries has been on the rise and as already described eating out and alcohol took a dip in 2011 but then have been rising ever since. Entertainment is on the rise as is vehicle maintenance - though with having two vehicles again, I'm not surprised with the dip and the return to 2010 levels. We're down a bit now, and so that's a good start to the year.

Home Maintenance is way down now that we're not in 'brand new house' mode, we want to buy everything to make it pretty' mode.  In to 2014 and Gas has indeed gone down - now that we're out of the worst of winter, I hope it will go down a tad more because we won't be warming vehicles up in the morning any longer. We're on a great start with groceries (thought an Anonymous commenter from yesterday has me thinking that Jordan and I have an opportunity to talk and really make some goals around this).  Eating out is creeping up, as is Alcohol.

We're on track for Entertainment, Pets, Medical...and I'm actually fairly happy with all of the remaining categories so far.

What is evident - and I know, I know I've said this before -  is that our weekly budget of $300 just isn't cutting it...need to have a think about our spending strategy...and perhaps our non-spending strategy.  I cant tell you that we haven't changed anything yet...but I'm hoping that through Gail's process, we might just get closer to working this one out.

Check out the My Money, My Choices programme by clicking here.

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