Kind of a boring month (phew...)
*Allowance I have to square away. Dh bought and returned some stuff along with Christmas stuff and not sure if those figures are right. I bought some clothes/books/CD. CD was for kids so will probably move that to misc.
*Auto - paid annual AAA dues & also squeaked in right at $300 for gas. I think we drove to San Jose 3-4 times and same for December. I don't intend to make many drives January - April. Phew. But still amazed we squeaked in the budget. I left it high for rising gas prices and such.
*Christmas - mostly kids and cousins. & stocking stuffers, etc. Phase 1 over. December = memberships and charity expenses.
*clothing = belts for BM, socks for me, a shirt to match BM's friends' gift - they like to wear matching clothes.
*Dining - actually were closer to our $30 budget this month.
*Groceries were rather on the high side this month, but below $500 budget. Included Thanksgiving dinner so makes sense.
*Insurance = flood & additional life insurance
*Misc. - we usually budget $150 but ebbs and flows for unexpected things and christmas and vacations and such. Tried to keep it low this month. Was just for gym, a trip to the movies, and to replace BM's melted mattress pad.
*Utilities have settled much lower with balanced billing, lower cable and newly metered water. Phew! Just got our November gas bill and it was under 1/2 of last years' bill. Thanks to mild weather mostly. I think our electric will edge upward because it was *off* for a while (charged too little) and gas will probably edge downward - with the balanced billing. (Next time they re-evaluate the monthly charge. We have separate gas & electric companies).
*Vacation - I don't have the totals yet. Will have later today. Will be another $100 at least.
Even so, with all the extra money we brought in November (focus groups and credit card rewards) we spent far less than we brought in.
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I was looking at comparison reports to last year (something I didn't have enough data to play with before). It is really cool how much we have saved this year compared to last year. Will have to share that at year-end.
I really love Quiken. Shows exactly where all our money went all year, last year, etc. Since accountants tend to deal more with historical data I guess there is more of an excitement factor for me as I have more data to play with.
November Expenses
December 3rd, 2007 at 03:53 pm
December 3rd, 2007 at 04:51 pm 1196700662
December 3rd, 2007 at 07:31 pm 1196710272