August Round Up

The month of August was...interesting. We didn't stick to the budget very well, and it shows. Here are the results - $ actual ($ budget).

The good:

• Car insurance: $0.00 ($130.30) - we added a car to the insurance, and somehow they miscalculated how much we owed and were able to eliminate a month of payments
• Car service: $22.85 ($41) - only one oil change this month!
• Groceries: $297.10 ($300) - wooohoooo! under grocery budget!
• Electric: $134.74 ($150) - I'd like to get this even lower this month when the weather requires no A/C or heat

The bad:

• Tolls: $40.25 ($25) - two toll payments hit this month, so it should balance out next month
• Dining: $14.81 ($0) - eating out should be fun money, so this should probably go there
• Gifts given: $140.84 ($50) - the wedding present from July went through in August, so that accounts for most of this.
• Household: $91.66 ($30) - we spent too much at Target. I need to keep this in check and maybe add to the budget

The ugly:

• Gasoline: $537.54 ($400) - ouch, this hurts. September will be better as my husband will be traveling for 3 out of 4 weeks. Hopefully this will even out the two months.
• My income (both jobs): $2534.44 ($3547) - I knew that my commissions this month would be off, and I cut back on my hours at my part time job to enjoy the summer a little. I am already making changes to fix this, including picking up another day at the part time job.
• Fun money: $474.72 ($200) - no excuses. We had a lot of fun in August. We knew we were spending too much money and went about it recklessly. We didn't use a cash system and we went a little crazy. September is back to cash.
  
• Credit card payment: $2154 ($2746) - well, this is where the cut is made. Money spent other places comes away from our main focus: getting out of debt. It's disappointing to have a setback and fuels the fire to hit our goal in September.

There you have it! Some things are working, some need work. Considering we had more bad than good, I'm pretty happy we still hit 78% of our debt paydown goal. But I know if we want to get out of debt by March, we need to step it up.