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I can hardly believe that it’s October already! That just seems insane to me. The months have been flying by since I started this blog in July. It has been a life saver in keeping me responsible for where my money goes. I’ve done good. I’ve done bad. It’s a learning experience and we take each day one at a time.
This month started very well with paying off our first credit card! That was a nice step, even though it was a small balance. It was the little push we needed to keep going.
Then we had a bit of an upset a few days before our vacation and had to reschedule a whole different one at the last minute! We ended up going to Las Vegas and it turned out wonderful and we had a great time. While there, my husband and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary!
I guess the biggest financial news is that I got a job. After looking for 6 months, I’m finally employed again. Which is good and all…except that it’s only 2-3 days a week at minimum wage and that’s essentially killing us and causing us to re-examine our already tightened budget!
I started classes this week and had to go through the whole ordeal of ordering my text books. Although I didn’t save as much money as I had hoped, I still saved a bit by buying through Amazon.
And we paid off our SECOND credit card in September also!
I did really well on grocery shopping and saved a ton of my money by buying in bulk at Sam’s Club. I’m starting to love that place more and more! 
What Was Spent?
Last month we spend $249 on groceries…but this month we spent even LESS! We ended up spending $206 on groceries, which is just under $37 per week plus our Sam’s Club trip of $60. That ends up being $4 under budget for the month (we were about $2 over each week on weekly groceries, but $10 under on our Sam’s shopping!).
I had set a dining out budget of $50 for September and we spent $90. This has been the hardest category to stay within budget on simply because our dining out is always unexpected. I tightened it even more for October and I’m sure that we’ll go over, so I need to reevaluate and try to see if we can get a bit more strict on this.
Our fuel costs have been going down each month! In July we spent $177 on gas, and in August we only spent $117. September followed the downward spiral and we only spent $115 (hey…it’s still lower!). Granted, we WERE out of the state for most of a week while on vacation, but I think we’re doing really well. We fill up about 3 times a month now compared to the 5-7 we used to when I worked a half hour away.
I haven’t been seeing as many doctors and such lately, so it was a good month medically speaking. I only spent $27.21 on prescriptions and $30.09 on doctor co-pays. I was able to get one of my medications through mail order which saved me $135! This is a huge relief as I thought I wasn’t going to be able to afford it and would have to stop taking it.
I spent $21.82 at Walgreens and another $49.26 at Rite Aid (out of pocket, not including anything purchased with Walgreens gift card). I ended up getting back $48.52 from Walgreens in rebates and $22.77 from Rite Aid ($71.29 combined). This means that I MADE .21 cents this month! Interesting!
Income & Snowflakes
Aside from our wages and my unemployment income, we made $439.15 for the month. We made $155 from money people owed us and they paid back, $145.41 selling stuff on Ebay, another $50 was a gift from my mom for our anniversary, $50 from PayU2Blog, $15 from Pinecone Research, $10 from MySurvey, $7.87 in interest from HSBC (emergency fund), $5.75 from PayPerPost and a whole .12 from ExpoTV.
As far as snowflakes go, I was able to put $755.30 into our snowflake account. I ended up sending a $300 payment to one of our credit cards, paying off the remaining balance of our furniture card, using $60 to buy a game for the Xbox that we had been saving for, and I put the rest towards savings when I decided to switch over from a debt paydown focus to a savings focus again.
The Nitty Gritty
Now here’s the rough details and numbers that show how we fare. We were $44,584.52 in debt when I started this blog on July 1st. Let’s take a look at how things are going for us after 3 months of trying to cut back.
- Credit Cards came in at $23,373.93 on 7/1/08 and are now down to $21,553.48, which is a decrease of $1,820.45 or 8%. We accrued $75.54 in interest on all of our credit cards combined.
- Our student loans started at $7,391.68 on 7/1/08 and are now down to $7,119.13 which is a decrease of $272.55 or 14%.
- The car loan started at $13,818.91on 7/1/08 and is now down to $12,882.64, a decrease of $936.27 or 7%.
- Investment accounts stayed at a 1% increase since July (cash basis).
- Overall assets went up by 24% since 7/1/08 (including our checking accounts, so this fluctuates as bills are paid and whatnot). Overall liabilities went down by 7% (from $44,584.52 to $41,555.25). This makes our current net worth -$27,274.73.
- We have an Emergency Fund with $1,995.53 at HSBC Direct. Our Christmas Fund account has $113.86 in it. Miscellaneous Savings has $85 (this is for our annual renewal of Xbox Live and renewal on website domains/hosting paid annually). Auto Maintenance Savings has $340 in it (although we STILL need some work done soon - transmission service and fuel treatment service). The Car Insurance Savings was drained yesterday in order to pay our 6 month premium. Insurance went up and I had to come up with an extra $200 above and beyond what we had paid for (not cool).
