Reality Check

Remember how I said I had to do a spending plan for my personal financial planning course?  I have to track and record ALL of our spending for the entire months of September and October.  Well, today I decided to total those numbers up for September.

Talk about a reality check!!  The number I got was definitely not expected.  I had expected half of that number!  Needless to say, I freaked.  How could 2 people and a puppy spend that much money in ONE month?!  I began to look at where it all was going.  In our spending plans, we have to categorize things and then show the percentage of that particular column of our total spending.  

September was full of uncommon expenses, but I still didn't understand where all the money went.  After reviewing the categories and looking at the percentages, the majority of our money is spent on (1) Rent and Utilities, (2) Auto, and (3) Health and Beauty.  
In our Auto category, we had the tags, the title for Cory's truck, the car payment, and a lot of gas because we traveled a lot in September.  In the Health and Beauty, we had prescriptions, Cory's hair-cut, toiletries, and of course health insurance.  Oh, and I had to get contacts too.
The areas where we spent the least were Leisure, Sam, and Clothing.  Obviously we do not treat ourselves since these were not terribly high.   Surprisingly, our grocery column was lower than I had expected.  It ranked 4th in the highest percentage of our total spending.  We do not eat out a lot and it obviously showed by those totals.

I really hope to cut that total in half for the month of October.  I have to pay for Cory's Christmas present, which will take out a huge chunk, but I hope to cut spending in all of the other areas as much as possible.  We won't have as many auto expenses, our cable will be cheaper (we are switching to DirecTV), and hopefully we can cut the grocery bill as well.  And, there shouldn't be any more major ThirtyOne purchases any time soon. :-)