October was a busy month. Mom went to work several times, we all got (and got over) colds and LP got potty trained! We also ate in a lot, which made for a good month budget-wise.

Every month I will provide a breakdown of our spending in detail, as well as some analysis of where we kept spending down and where we needed to improve. Our goal each month, is to keep our monthly spending to $3500 or less, which includes $2550 of fixed costs, $200 of savings and $750 of non-fixed expenses.

The Money Breakdown for October, 2012

In total we spent $4519.57 (which includes $2550 in fixed expenses and $200 put away into savings). This includes $779.57 spent on non-fixed expenses.

Of the $779.57 spent on non-fixed expenses:

$573.82 was spent on groceries
$115.42 was spent on some thing the G-man wanted for his birthday, including a work table, a cool flashlight and some dark chocolate bars.
$37.94 was spent on gas
$34.39 was spent on coffee shops (and one take-out dinner)
$30.00 was spent on donations
$16.99 was spent on household needs (including a special potty seat for our newly potty-trained kiddo!)
$16.01 was spent on vitamins

If we subtract the G-man’s birthday buys (which he bought using money he was gifted for his birthday) from our non-fixed spending we spent $664.15, almost $100.00 below our goal of spending $750.00 (or less) of our non-fixed expenses every month.

Analysis:

Where we saved:

We saved quite a bit by not going out to eat at all this month (once we returned from our trip). Other than one dinner of take-out burritos (which we had right after we got home) we have cooked for ourselves pretty much the whole month. We also had a month when our garden was winding down and we didn’t have many household-fixing tasks to take care of, so that helped reign in our household budget. And, of course, we save gas by not really going anywhere!

Where we spent:

Of all the things we spent money on this month, we really spent the most on groceries. Some of this was because we had to restock our fridge and pantry after being away. Some of this was because we weren’t eating out. We also did splurge on a couple sale items like Daiya and fire-roasted tomatoes. They were totally worth it, but we probably could have saved more on those trips if we wanted to. We did save almost $100, which will help us make a dent in the overspending from last month. We’ll try to keep up with this for the next few months at least!