Wednesday, April 1, 2009

March In Review

At least March is over. Lol. Seriously. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we went over our monthly budget, as you can see below.

Actually, it's not quite as bad as it looks because I included our car expense in the sheet which was almost $800. That came out of a car fund, so it didn't have an effect on our monthly budget. So without it, this is how March looked.

Not to justify it, but I should be receiving money from the other bridesmaid for $100, which will put our end budget almost $50 in the surplus. Or I can just let this month take a hit and use that money toward more wedding expenses.

We went over in:
  • Clothing (this is the first we've touched this category this year)
  • Electric - now that we don't have the heat on this should be drastically reduced in April
  • Gifts - the next two months are going to be bad also
We came under in:
  • Groceries - under almost a weeks worth!
  • Supplies - I used a gift card for what we had to buy
  • Cell phone - hubby changed the plan partway through, so it should even lower next month
  • Gas - praying the prices stay down
  • Dining out!
  • Hubby's school supplies - he's been over the past few months so that should help
  • Our misc. funds
I am super happy that we came in under in more than twice the amount of categories then we went over it!

Note: Our budget is set off of a yearly budget, so all the categories are the yearly amount divided by 12, so despite being over some months we will hopefully be under in others and come out even or possibly under at the end of the year. I am working on doing a separate monthly budget just for kicks, but spare time is a rare commodity.

Debt
As you probably noticed, I didn't include our debt and savings. We were able to pay down over $1,660 in debt this month! We are now down to just over $17,000 left. Since we are a quarter of the way through the year I crunched some numbers to see how we were fairing, and if we can keep doing what we're doing, then we will be able to have hubby's loan paid off by the end of the year!

2 comments:

Brooke said...

i think you guys did a great job! :)

we struggle (including mr. right's business expenses) to get our budget under $3K a month!

hopefully our march will be better (i haven't done the numbers yet.

Simplelivin' said...

Good luck with that Brooke! Have you tried keeping track with Mr. Right's business stuff separately?