Here is a breakdown of my expenses for May.
|
Household |
$47.09 |
| Entertainment |
$89.98 |
|
Transportation |
$808.52 |
|
Food |
$134.60 |
| Gambling | $350 |
| Travel | $53.22 |
| Phone |
$26.81 |
| Health |
$56.13 |
|
Total |
$1566.35 |
My monthly expense total will now reflect just my expenses, keep that in mind when comparing them to expenses for the last year or so. My expenses were higher than I like in May. There were several areas for improvement. The easiest one to work on is gambling. That should be zero for June.
My biggest expense was for transportation and that will be my biggest expense this month as well. I spent about $475 on gas in May. I’d like to significantly reduce that this month. Part of that total was because of the road trip I took at the end of May that extended into June. There will be no more road trips this month which should allow me to save on gas. The transportation total also included my taxes and registration for buying the van. This month the total will include my first van payment so those will pretty much offset.
Overall, I expect my expenses to be much lower in June although I haven’t gotten off to a great start. Driving less and not gambling at all should allow me to keep my expenses under $700 for the month of June.
That’s a pretty low number for food. You must be avoiding eating out, even though I suspect you’re not real well equipped for much elaborate cooking. How are you achieving less than $5/day on food?
Actually, I’d guess I ate out about 30 or 40 times in May. Ten of them were mystery shops where I didn’t have to pay though. A lot of the others were just a $1 burger and a water or similar. My food budget used to be $100 a month but inflation has caught up with me. I’m trying to spend a little more to eat healthier but most of the foods I really like are cheap.
Yeah, that is a really low number for food. We spent that in a week.
I guess I’m doing better on food than I thought. It was more then I thought I should have spent. In addition to the mystery shops I also had two or three free meals at my mom’s which helped keep my food expense low.
Not bad! That’s a pretty reasonable number. Am I missing something or is your house paid off? I see no mortgage or rent. Also I hope that $350 in gambling turned into $700 of income 🙂
You have probably missed the fact that I’m living in my van. Thus, no mortgage or rent.
The gambling rarely turns into income so I’m going to take a break from it for a while.
I’ll echo the same thoughts…that food number is CRAZY low. Do you just eat ramen noodles? I ate pasta roni, ramen, and totinos frozen pizzas for a year and a half when I first started working my way out of debt. lol. I loved how cheap my food budget was!
Hopefully you can lower the gas though, that’s pretty outrageous. Although, my wife and I spend $400/month on gas.
I don’t eat ramen much but the other cheap foods are some of my favorites which naturally leads to a low food bill. I’m trying to eat better though so I don’t end up with a large medical bill.
I definitely have lots of room for improvement on the gas expense.
Your transportation costs were high but your trip seemed fun!
It was a fun trip although I couldn’t really justify the expense given the current state of my finances. Since I brought the van for road trips I wanted to make sure it would work for them.
Sorry to repeat the refrain of the other commenters, but eating healthy, more expensive food is the best health and life insurance money can buy.
I’m working on it but it will take a while to change my habits.