Sunday, February 27, 2011

Money - End of Month Summary

I counted my receipts today. It was interesting... My biggest surprise was my spending on things like Wal-Mart and Shoppers Drug Mart. I spent close to $300 dollars on those types of places.

I did really well on not eating out for supper, and didn’t do so once until this last week when I went out for lunch with the girl that was training my at work for her last day and last night for Melissa’s birthday. Happy Birthday today to Melissa! Those two events of eating out cost me around $100 dollars. It made me think about how it’s not unusual for me to eat out a couple times, at least, in a month. I don’t think it’s reasonable to cut it out of my life completely. There’s always going to be birthday dinners, or other events that call for dinner and drinks, and I enjoy it.

One thing I think I have to change is buying lunch and buying snacks. We have a convenience store on the ground floor of my apartment building and Flash and I make tons of trips down there in the evenings to grab snacks. I added up what several lunches of tons of trips to the convenience store cost me and it was $130 (and that was me trying to cut back on these types of purchases). The people I work with go out for lunch and for drinks after work quite often. I don’t want to rude and always refuse so I know once in a while I’ll have to.  I think I have to make a real commitment to making my lunches. It never feels like much at the time but those $7-10 lunches add up.

I finally figured out what my Internet and cable will be with the channels we've added and taken away and with three people contributing… I think. My cable bill goes mid-month to mid-month and they send us the bill for two months at a time. It’s the most confusing bill I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m glad Melissa deals with it.

My work pays monthly. I don’t know anyone who gets paid monthly; it’s a new concept for me. I will be paid on the last day of every month. I’m used to bi-monthly payments so this will require a shift in budgeting. I’ll have to be extra conscious of my spending again this month because I got paid for the past two weeks but I won’t get another paycheck until the 31st of March. Luckily Flash starts contributing to the rent this month so that helps a bit. I don’t think I’ll feel like I have a really solid footing with my budget until the end of March or April when my paychecks have been consistent for a while.

Overall money sucks. Next month is fun month so I’m going to have to be budget conscious because fun costs money.

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