May Expenses – $1346.40

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for May.

Household	$819.66
Rent	$304.66
Entertainment	$0
Transportation	$16.46
Food	$124.25
Travel	($11.20)
Phone	$42.57
Health	$50
Total	$1346.40

My May expenses were high compared to last month’s extremely low expenses. My necessary expenses were actually quite low. My expenses for the month were only high due to making cash gifts.

I didn’t have any entertainment expense at all again this month. With everything being closed there is nowhere for me to go to spend money on entertainment.

Transportation expense was for $20 of gas and $6.46 for a flat tire repair kit. My auto insurance company issued me a $10 refund reducing this small total even more. That is about as low as this expense can get as long as I still have a car.

My travel expense for the month was negative $11.20. I received a refund of taxes from cancelling a couple of flights. I’m waiting for a refund of taxes from a third cancelled flight. Since I don’t know when I’ll be allowed to travel to the countries I want to visit I’m not yet making any travel plans. I doubt I’ll spend any money on travel this month.

My food expense went up quite a bit. I had way too many takeout meals and I wasn’t as good at only buying bargains as I was in April. This expense is still pretty low compared to my average spending over the last couple of years. I think I’ll be able to reduce this expense a little this month.

My phone bill was higher than normal. This was due to having to use my phone as a hotspot. We had a big storm earlier in the month which left us with no power and no internet for three days. Since I needed internet to work my doc review job, I used my phone as a hotspot for a few hours. The rest of the time I went to my aunt’s house and worked from there. Spending a bit more on my phone bill made sense since it allowed me to earn a lot more than the extra data cost.

My health expense was $50 for a doctor visit. I probably won’t have any health expense this month.

Household expense was the big expense category for the month. I donated $300 to various charities as a way of giving back some of the stimulus money I received. This will also allow me to take a $300 charitable deduction on next year’s taxes. I also paid about $500 to buy new siding for my mom’s house. A couple of walls as well as the roof were damaged in the storm. Since the roof was nineteen years old, insurance didn’t cover the full cost of replacing the roof. I’m paying some of the expense of replacing the siding to help offset what she has to pay out of pocket.

Without the $800 of money I gave to others, my expenses would have been under $600. I will be paying more home repair expenses for my mom this month so my expense level will be even higher this month. Otherwise, I would expect to have a low expense month.

How was your month?