January Budget: How Did We Do?

{ February 1st, 2008 }

Pretty good, given our circumstances. Here are the numbers:

As you can see, we were significantly over budget in our Gas (82%) and Misc (73%) line items, but generally within budget in every other category. Mad props need to go out to my wife who did a stellar job in getting two grown adults through an entire month on an average of $2.31 per day per person. That’s about $0.77 cents per meal *insert googly eyes*. Can she get a what-what? Most of the reason for us ending over budget this month was due to the fact that we lost a car and I was forced to shell out money for a bus fair and next month’s bus pass. Together these these two expenses ended up costing us $128.50 - ouch! I may end up getting a steep discount on my monthly pass rate next month because of a company hook up a relative of mine gets. We could realize some significant savings in this category over the course of the year that could really help us reach some of our larger financial goals. When all is said and done we ended up 3.2% over budget.

Side Note: This month I also set caps on some of our Regular Expense Savings categories. Once we hit our limit in these accounts any extra money that would be diverted to these savings vehicles will be added to our savings goals. I did this in an effort to help us overcome the gap between our goals and what we expect to be able to save over the course of the year.

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