Spending Hangover-A look at what I spent last week

I am slowly opening up to the idea of sharing some numbers. Today I am going to share some of my spending from the past week. Once a month I’m will share a random week us it as a snapshot of what I’m doing with my money. I won’t share the first week of the month because I am paying the majority of my bills: mortgage, electric, phone, groceries, etc  during that time.

The last three weeks of each month are the ones that cause me the most trouble.  I only get paid the final business day of each month so my money has to last until then.

I chose last week to highlight because I had a number of expenses that are one-time occurrences. It’s amazing how these random expenses can quickly get out of control.

Here’s the Damage

Monday-No Money Spent

Tuesday-$2.97 Samosas-Slowly running out of groceries. Haven’t planned my food well for this week and I will pay for this by the end of the week.

Wednesday-No Money Spent

Thursday-Spent a lot

• $2.16-Two notebooks (one for spanish class, the other for blogging notes)
• $80.68*-Spanish book I am renting it. Yes, it’s ridiculous to rent the book but the regular purchase price was $154
• $10.90-Vegan Challenge Hunger pains. Went to Alfalfa’s grocery store and picked up non-dairy yogurts and vegan protein bars for work.
• $2.50 Starbucks coffee-Purchased on the way back to the office. The walk was great as the day was GORGEOUS. No coat needed and I was sweating-not glistening!
• $30.00*-Kaiser Permanente-owed for an office visit
• Total: $126.24

Friday-$8.00-Coffee and bagel with hummus and avocado-still don’t have enough food at home. Didn’t want to purchase a huge dinner as I was going to Warhorse the Musical that evening and needed to eat something to tide me over until I returned home.

Saturday-Amazing Saturday! It was another hot day where sitting in the sun, wearing some shades and hanging with a friend was in order

• $8.00 Coffee and vegan sandwich-3 hours sitting in the sun talking with my friend L. No coat needed!
• $5.00-Coffee for coffee date that never happened. He cancelled 4 hours earlier, but I hadn’t checked my emails. It was annoying but since I never met him I didn’t take it too personally!  That’s how dating goes sometimes.
• $219*-Nikon Coolpix L610 Camera including (case, lithium batteries, memory card, and 2 photography classes) in addition to a couple of other really good perks. The camera was also $100 off the original price. I was planning on buying a camera in February but decided that this was a great deal ($149 instead of $249) and that the camera would work well for the projects that I would be working on in the future.
• Total:$232

Sunday-Finally went grocery shopping and went to dinner with my friend and her husband. I ate like a wolf as I was starving. Need to work on that! It was the first time that I had gone out to dinner in the past 2 months

• $56-Groceries Whole Foods-includes coffee beans!
• $38-Dinner at True Food Cherry Creek. Had a fantastic meal with my friends.
• $17*-Registered for the Fight for Air Stair Climb in February. I had a 1/2 off coupon the regular registration price is $34
• Total:$111

All of the items with an asterisk are out of the ordinary one time purchases that totaled-$346.68 (yikes)

I am in the habit of grocery shopping (of course), going out for coffee on the weekends, and going to the occasional dinner that is why I didn’t include those line-items with the out of the ordinary purchases.

These numbers don’t reflect some good habits. Those are:

• I make almost all of my weekly meals.
•  I have gotten out of the habit of going to the grocery store several times during the week to pick up extra things that I think I might need for special meals that I would like to make.
• I make coffee at home or at work so my coffee expenditures have gone down. This weekend was unusual as it is  a three day weekend and I hung out with L. at the coffee shop for three hours and enjoyed a latte and a sandwich. It was money well spent!

The numbers also don’t show some small victories

• I didn’t pay any library fines this week!!! This is a huge victory. I am working on being a lot more careful with returning books to the library early or extending the due date if they aren’t a featured title. I think I paid $400 in fines last year as I averaged about $6.50 every other week. Then I had a huge fine at the end of the year of $51 as well as a $25 fine earlier in the year.
• I didn’t touch my savings!!! I always move money from my savings to my checking. This month (so far) I haven’t touched it. I still have almost two weeks before payday. I have a lot some cash towards social events so I won’t touch what’s in the bank
• I will have money left over at the end of the month. Like many people I have been in the habit of living paycheck to paycheck so there is very little money left at the end of the month.

I encourage you to take a look at your weekly budget as calculate how many one-time expenses   you paid for last week. How did these expenses affect your overall budget? What good habits are you in the habit of doing. Do you have money victories that you would like to share?

Simply Red-Money’s Too Tight (to mention)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrUB0g8Vjgg]

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Michelle

I am an obsessive foodie, but not self-righteous with it, love travel, meeting new people, helping you look good, and am freaked out by people who don't enjoying reading...something! Grab a Perrier, read my blog, feel free to drop me a line! Hope to hear from you soon.

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