April Expenses

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Here are my April expenses by category:

Rent/Household

$450

Transportation

$247.40

Utilities

$49.58

Food

$110.11

Entertainment

$13.43

Debt

$35

Medical/Dental

$40

Total

$945.52

My transportation expense went up a lot because I’m using my car for my delivery job. Food expense also went up since I bought too many groceries and ate out too often. Food expense will definitely come down this month as a result of my current grocery challenge. Medical/Dental will have a huge increase because I’m paying $830 to get my wisdom teeth taken out. I hope to increase the amount paid towards my debt also. Everything else should remain roughly the same.

I thought I had previously posted my March expenses but I can’t find them on my blog. I’ll be posting them later this week.

Grocery Challenge-Update 1

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So far the grocery challenge is going well. Of course, this is only the fourth day. I have hit one snag though. The grocery store where I performed the mystery shop only had skim milk in one gallon sizes. I can’t drink a whole gallon of milk before it goes bad so I didn’t purchase any. My new challenge amount will be $5 to allow me to buy a couple half gallons of skim milk over the course of the month.

Just finished my last final yesterday. Should have more time to keep this blog updated now. I’ll be attending the Dave Ramsey event here in Kansas City tomorrow and will have a post about it next week.

April Income

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Here is my April Income divided by source.

Online Income

$195.19

Ebay

$47.52

Mystery Shopping

$18.53

Survey

$10

Job

$909.58

Medical Study

$100

Interest earned

$20.13

Total

$1300.95

I started a job in April so online income will probably be lower in May as I have less time to spend online.

Update 5-5-07: I have now updated the table with my correct job income. Interest and medical study income were added also. That should be all my sources of income now unless there is another one I forgot.

Are You Frugal for Others?

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There are many ways to distinguish between frugal and cheap. One way is if you are frugal not just when spending your own money but with other people’s as well. For example, I don’t have to pay for water at my apartment but I still don’t leave the water running when I’m brushing my teeth. I just don’t like to waste anything even if I am not paying for it.

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One Month $1 Grocery Challenge

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After having someone post a link to one of my posts on Frugal Village, I browsed the forums there. I noticed they had a grocery challenge which had a similar concept to the food budget portion of my one month challenge. Since I’ve once again started eating too much and spending too much on food since the challenge ended I’ve decided to start a new one month challenge for May. My one month challenge for May will be to have my total food expenditures total less than $1.

Groceries have been accumulating in my pantry the last couple of months so this will be a good way to use them up. I also have two mystery shops in May that will give me a total of $10 in free groceries that will allow me to supplement my pantry and provide some fresh items.

You might be wondering how I plan on meeting this challenge when I couldn’t meet the $30 goal of the previous challenge. There are several factors that will be working in my favor this time. The biggest is that I know work in a pizza restaurant and will be able to get free food when working there. Also I am getting my wisdom teeth pulled out in May and will probably not feel like eating much for a few days. I may have an opportunity to do some restaraunt mystery shops as well. My plan is to have a weekly posting detailing my results for each week. Check in on Friday for my first report.