12 Week Spending Review #4

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12 week spending review 4 

For the last 48 weeks, I have consistently (yay for me) been tracking all of our spending through my weekly “Where Did The Dough Go” posts. I had planned to do this quarterly, every 13 weeks, but we get paid bi-weekly. It would be too inconsistent with 6 paychecks one quarter and 7 the next, so I opted for almost quarterly (i.e. 12 weeks) reviews. So, below is the spending review for the last 12 weeks—showing our spending, saving, investing and incoming income. The weekly averages are in italics and brackets.

Weeks 37-48:

Income $7,807.02     ($650.58)
Pre-tax 401K Contributions $801.50     ($66.79)
Savings $724.99     ($60.42)
Groceries $840.67     ($70.06)
Rent & Bills $4,254.00     ($354.50)
Gas $271.48     ($22.62)
Cigarettes $640.18     ($53.35)
Alcohol $257.23     ($21.44)
Dining out $198.50     ($16.54)
Saved 4 car insurance $120.00     ($10.00)
Puppy Stuff $170.34    ($14.20)
Other Stuff $213.13    ($17.76)
Roth IRA contributions $100.00     ($8.33)
Entertainment $13.08     ($1.09) 

The listed income is take-home pay, so it’s after all taxes and deductions including the 401K contributions. These last 12 weeks, we didn’t spend any money on clothing, car expenses, Betterment or gifts, so they’ve been excluded from the review for weeks 37-48.

Top 5 Categories

#1 Rent & Bills (55%)
#2 Groceries (11%)
#3 Savings (9%)
#4 Cigarettes (8%)
#5 Gas (3%)

 

Total for Weeks 1-48:

Income $30,723.92     ($640.08)
Pre-tax 401K Contributions $2,713.52     ($56.53)
Savings $3,173.79     ($66.12)
Groceries $3,019.11     ($62.90)
Rent & Bills $15,880.50     ($330.84)
Gas $1,132.46     ($23.59)
Cigarettes $2,641.59     ($55.03)
Alcohol $979.81     ($20.41)
Dining out $945.05     ($19.69)
Saved 4 car insurance $480.00     ($10.00)
Entertainment $71.45     ($1.49)
Puppy Stuff $484.89    ($10.10)
Other Stuff $966.12     ($20.13)
Roth IRA contributions $501.59     ($10.45)
Betterment contributions $120.00     ($2.50)
B-day/Xmas $590.17     ($12.30)
Car Expenses $70.54     ($1.47)
Clothing $26.65     ($0.56)

 

Top 5 Categories

#1 Rent & Bills (51%)
#2 Savings (10%)
#3 Groceries (10%)
#4 Cigarettes (8%)
#5 Gas (4%)

12 weeks spending review 4 weeks 1 to 48

Do you track your spending?

About Jen Perkins

Likes: saving money, being debt free (aside from our house), zombies, travel, getting money, blogging and dogs. Dislikes: debt, being broke, bunnies, wasting money, not having enough money to travel the world and paying interest. Facebook  ♥  Twitter  ♥  Google+  ♥  RSS

Comments

12 Week Spending Review #4 — 16 Comments

    • Thanks Daisy, I’m glad too. :-) It’s just from Excel, I plug the numbers in real quick and get a cute little chart.

  6. Nice job!! You are very organized! Do you find your husband wants to spend more? What does he do for lunch? My fiancé drives a lot and thus spends a lot on gas, coffee, and fast food. Some weeks are better than others. Just curious how you balance spending with your hubbie.

    • Thanks Rachel. My husband understands how important our finances are to me, so he does really good about not wanting to over-spend on things. This isn’t counting his alcohol though, he could spend more but I think he tries to not go totally overboard. :-)

      He gave me control over our finances years ago, because he was really awful with money. Since we’ve been working on our finances, we have made some priorities for paychecks. We pay for the most important things first and try to save and invest some off the bat. Then we have to work with what’s left for the rest of what we need or want.

    • It’s not really as hard/awful as it seems, I’ve actually grown to love it. :-) Good luck on tracking your spending.