December Expenses – $1523.68

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for December.

December was a low expense month. A big reason for the low expenses was the use of gift cards purchased in November that were reflected in November’s expenses. The use of a previously purchased movie gift card allowed us to go to the movies a couple of times and still have a $0 entertainment expense for the month. The use of restaurant gift cards allowed me to only have a food expense of $56.36. Most of that total was made up of the $50 a month I contribute towards groceries each month.

The big bills were $500 to my student loan and almost $300 of phone expense.  If you take away those two expenses I would be under my monthly target of $1000 in expenses. The student loan payment was made to reach the max  $2500 student loan interest tax deduction.

The phone expense reflects over $250 spent to purchase a Nexus 5x in order to switch to Google Fi phone service. My Virgin Mobile phone died on me and I decided to try out Google’s phone service. I didn’t want to spend so much on a phone, but the 5x was the cheapest phone they had.  The new phone plan should save me a few bucks a month, but it will take a long time to make up for the cost of the phone.

I expect January to be a low expense month and most of my expenses should be in their normal range. Sometime this week I plan to post a yearly summary of my expenses and income.

How was your month?