Andy Hough

January Income – $1805.92

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Here is a breakdown of my income for January.

Online Income

$407.62

Interest

$51.83

Stock Dividends

$20.33

Job

$971.33

Survey/Cashback

$6.67

Ebay/Selling stuff

$108.14

Bank Bonuses

$240

Total

$1805.92

January was a pretty good month for income. It was nice to see that I made almost as much from my alternative income sources as I did from my job. It will be difficult to match my alternative income total this month although I already know my online income will be up. As long as my income is a few hundred dollars more than my expenses I will be content.

January Expenses – $1148.74

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for January.

Household

$403.79

Entertainment

$67.32

Transportation

 $138.76

Food

$115.09

Health

$67.66

Phone

$34.63

Debt

 $29.00

Laptop/printer

 $333.15

Total

$1189.40

My expenses were reasonable in January. If it weren’t for the purchase of a new laptop and printer they would have been under my goal of $1000 and I still didn’t miss that target by much.  There won’t be any large purchases in February and I expect my normal expenses to remain about the same so I should easily be under $1000 for expenses this month.

What a $360 Apartment Looks Like

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Here are a few pictures of my apartment for those who are wondering what you get for $360. The pictures were taken from my cell phone and I’m not much of a photographer but I think you will get the general idea. My apartment is two rooms if you can’t tell from the pictures. There is also a bathroom which is not pictured. Since the pictures were taken I have upgraded from a sleeping bag to a mattress. I don’t have furniture but that is by choice. This is a cheap, frugal apartment and it is all I need. If you have any questions about the apartment feel free to ask.

What Do You Spend on Food?: A Grocery Budget Experiment

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It is always interesting to me when people share their grocery budget and the foods they buy. There is a wide variety of opinions on how much is needed to buy groceries for a month. Look at the comments on my post about my food stamp experience and my follow-up post on food stamps to see some of the differing opinions.

I generally spend about $100-$120 a month on food, that includes groceries and restaurants. I don’t try especially hard to keep my food expenditure low but my preferred foods are fast-food and junk food which tend to be cheap. As an experiment at the beginning of this month I decided to not eat any meals out and eat whatever I wanted at home. After two weeks the results showed that I could eat just as bad at home as at a restaurant. Not eating out might have saved me some money but it didn’t result in me eating any healthier or losing any weight. That experiment has been abandoned and I am on to the next experiment.

For the month of February I will share with you all the foods I buy and what I pay for them. To try to keep my diet somewhat healthy I am only going to eat out once a week and not purchase any chips, cookies, candy, crackers, ice cream or soda. For me that will force a major change in diet although I suppose there are still plenty of bad foods left I could eat. I’m not going to buy any more food the rest of this month in order to reduce the amount of foods in my pantry before the experiment starts. I believe that with these changes I will spend less than $100 for food for the month and eat healthier than average or at least healthier than the average bachelor.

I would be interested in seeing what you spend on food. If you want to share leave a comment with your monthly food budget.

Weekend Spending Spree

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My goal of spending less money this year is not off to a very good start after this weekend. On Friday I saw that Nebraska Furniture Mart was advertising a twin mattress for $30. Since I have been sleeping on the floor in my new apartment this looked like a pretty good deal. After sleeping on the mattress for a couple of nights I am happy with the purchase. Although it is a foam mattress it is much firmer than I expected but still softer than the floor. It isn’t a great mattress but for $30 it was a good deal.

Sunday was when I spent the big money. I had internet installed in my apartment a couple weeks ago but my aging laptop was so slow that it was too frustrating too use the internet much at home. I tried cleaning up the disk and running some anti-virus and spyware programs but my laptop’s performance didn’t improve. I finally came to the conclusion that with my laptop being five years old and performing poorly it was time to buy a new one. Best Buy advertised a new laptop for $280 in Sunday’s paper so I went and bought it. They had a printer/copier/scanner for $30 when you bought the laptop so I bought that too. The performance of the new laptop is so much better that I do not regret the purchase.

I know some people have to keep themselves from spending money. My problem is the opposite I have to make myself spend money. The items I bought this weekend (except maybe the printer) were items that needed and I will receive great value from for the price. I still had a hard time convincing myself to buy them. I convinced myself to make these purchases by deciding not to take a trip to Las Vegas that I had been considering. Sometimes you do have to spend money.