Expense/Income Tracking

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for July.

My expenses were down slightly from June. The biggest expense was for transportation, but it was quite a bit lower than last month.  I didn’t spend any money on gas after the 16th.  I did use a lot of gas though to drive to Atlanta and back and to visit my brother in South Carolina.  I’m hoping I can cut down on the miles this month.  I have a trip to Kansas City today so I’m not off to a good start.  My food expense is low because I spent the last half of the month at my mom’s.  I still spent money on meals out and some food though or that expense could have been even lower.  The travel expense was for working so I’m ok with it.  Entertainment was the main category I could have cut back on.  It should be lower this month.  This is probably about the level my expenses will be until I pay off my van.  I’m still going to try to get them a little lower though.

Here is a breakdown of my income for May.

My income continues to decline. My online income is still down and will probably be even lower this month.  I’m hoping it will rebound after this month.  Luckily I have some passive and alternative streams of income to help make up for the reduced online income.   I didn’t sell anything in June and have only sold one thing so far in July.  I need to get busy selling stuff the rest of the month.  My interest income has declined to the point that it doesn’t really deserve it’s own category any more.  I’m scaling back on mystery shopping this month but most shops pay the month after you do them so it will be a month before the decline shows up.  I will have some job income this month but I need to find some more ways to increase my income.  This level of income will not pay my bills and pay off my debts.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for June.

My expenses were still higher than I like in June. The biggest expense was for transportation.  It will likely be my biggest expense for quite a while but I’d like to get it down.  I spent almost $500 on gas in June. I’d like to reduce that this month.  I thought I’d reduce it in June, but I ended up taking another long trip at the end of the month.  I thought I could keep my expenses at about $700 for June, but that turned out to not be realistic.  I’m hoping I can at least get my expenses under $1000 this month.  That will be difficult because I’ve got to spend quite a bit of money in order to make a little money working as an extra.  I’ll get my expenses under control eventually.

Here is a breakdown of my income for May.

My online income is still down but I’m hoping it has plateaued.  Luckily I have some passive and alternative streams of income to help make up for the reduced online income.  I was able to sell quite a bit of stuff in May.  I still have lots of stuff to sell but haven’t gotten around to trying to sell anything this month but I plan to get some stuff listed for sale later this week.  I was also able to make a little from mystery shopping.  I only include my fees as income.  I don’t count the reimbursements for food, gas, movie tickets, etc. , but getting those things for free does save me some money.  I also made quite a bit in cash back but that was just a fluke of hitting the redemption levels on a couple of my credit cards and receiving some promo bonuses from Ebates.   I also received some cash back from Mr. Rebates for referring other users.  So the cash back isn’t all from my spending.   I’m guessing my income for June will be about the same as long as I’m able to sell a few things the last couple weeks of the month.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for May.

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.