budget

Living on $700 a Month

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Back in January I posted my sample $1000 a month budget.  I don’t stay strictly on this budget but it is a fairly accurate representation of my monthly expenses.  Frugal Freedom lives on even less and posted her $700 a month budget.  Below is her monthly budget.  I combined some expenses into categories to make it easier to compare to my monthly budget.

  • Food $150
  • Transportation $256
  • Utilities $149  (electric,internet, and phone)
  • Life Insurance $47
  • Everything Else $98 (trash,Christmas, property tax)

The main difference in our budgets is that she doesn’t have a rent or mortgage payment in her budget because she lives in an RV.  She does have a house with a mortgage but I’m guessing she doesn’t include it here because her renters cover the mortgage payments(?).  Other than that our budgets are pretty similar.  One difference is that she doesn’t have any money budgeted for entertainment or health insurance.  She also spends money on life insurance which I don’t have because I have no need for it.

This does show that you can live on very little money if you plan for it.  If anyone else has a low monthly budget they’d like to share I’d like to see it.

August Income- $1389.60

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Here is a breakdown of my income for August.

Job

$864.82

Online Income

$355.50

Bank/Referral Bonuses

$135

Interest

$16.88

Surveys/Selling Stuff

$17.40

Total

$1389.60

My income was decent considering I only worked for about half the month.  M y online income should be up significantly next month.  I use the cash method of accounting, I had a good amount of affiliate sales in August that won’t be counted until I receive them this month.  It will be difficult to make up the $864 in job income though.  I’m working on some ways to increase my online income but it will probably be a couple months before I see any results.