March was a difficult month for us. However, even admist difficulty the kids continued to grow and thrive and we even got a few nice warm days to play outside. That being said, I’m glad April is here.

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 March, 2013

In total we spent $3661.33 (which includes $2550 in fixed expenses and $200 put away into savings). This includes $1096.33 spent on non-fixed expenses.

Of the $1096.33 spent on non-fixed expenses:

$440.71 was spent on groceries
$185.00 was spent on music class for LP
$117.35 was spent on household supplies, like paper towels, Kleenex, a replacement piece for our bathroom drain, etc.
$114.21 was spent on some gifts and other miscellaneous items
$73.88 was spent on garden supplies for the G-man. The grow shelves are, well, growing!
$65.81 was spent on gasoline, parking and reloading our T-pass
$59.72 was spent on eating out
$26.59 was spent on health care (copays, and medication)
$13.06 was spent at coffee shops

If we subtract the gardening supplies and LP’s music class (which are budgeted for separately) from our non-fixed spending we spent $837.45, about $100.00 above our goal of spending $750.00 on our non-fixed expenses every month.

Analysis:

Where we saved:

I continued on my mission to keep our grocery bill down, and the mission continues to be successful. I’m working on using more of what is in our pantry, which has meant a lot of delicious pasta and lentil meals. I’m proud to say we kept our grocery bill below it’s budgeted amount, even with several “stocking up” trips to Trader Joe’s, Stop and Shop and Costco.

Where we spent:

For various reasons we ate out more this month. It was nice that quite a lot of this was covered by gift cards we received for Christmas, but we did exceed those. While this did push us over our budget this month, a lot of this eating out was due to temporary issues. Even just in these last couple weeks our lives have returned to their eating-at-home, entertaining-ourselves normalcy. I also expect that nice weather in April (I hope) makes trips to the park more appealing than trips to the burrito store 🙂