by Tricia
Last month was not a good month in terms of keeping track of receipts. I have been trying to find them all, but I still ended up missing two. I decided to split the money spent on those receipts between groceries and household since they were Walmart purchases. I know we did spend some money getting some things for travel that I consider household because they are reusable.
Ok, here are some other things I saw to note about the report…
Groceries – They were under $300 this month. I like seeing that, but I do know that it is mostly due to being gone 6 days on our trip.
Toys – We spent a little bit more on toys than normal. All of the spending there was to purchase things for my son to keep him busy on the car ride. New toys work wonders when traveling with children 😉
Travel – Wow. I didn’t realize how much it really costs for us to take the trip to see our parents. This is the first time I have kept the receipts separate for trips like this. I don’t think we did too bad, with spending $513 to travel around 1,300 miles in 6 days. That amount includes lodging, gas, pet boarding and meals on the road. Yes, there were places we could have saved money (like the hotel rooms), but we made a decision to splurge a little there.
Overall, we are still spending less than we earn and our net income for the month was almost $1,300.
December will be the really challenging month with Christmas. We decided that we are going to create a budget and stick to it for Christmas this year. It is so easy to get caught up in gift-giving like I have done so many times in the past. Christmas has actually been one of the major contributors to our credit card debt. I like to give, and give big. I almost feel like Christmas will be the true test of how far I’ve come with trying to live within our means.
Back to discussing October, here’s the report. Feel free to comment and ask questions.
