One Month Challenge: April 2009
Of course all of the stuff in my previous 2 posts won’t happen if I don’t manage my money so here we go again…the format is Category: % of spending (difference from January)
Rent, Daycare, and Medical: 38% (down)
Groceries: 21% (almost doubled!)
Entertainment: 15% (same)
Fast Food: 10% (up slightly)
Gifts & Fuel: 6% (more than tripled!)
Transit/Grooming/Politics: 6% (huge increase!)
Dining Out: 4% (down a bit)
So my goal at the end of January was to reduce dining out and fast food and increase groceries – I suppose 2 out of 3 isn’t a bad score but that grocery increase is insane! In June of 2007 it was 5%, in January of this year it was 11% and now it’s somehow 21%. To put that in firm numbers, in January I spent $231.41 on groceries but in April I spent $427.30! The fast food dollars also increased and the dining out only decreased a little so it’s not a matter of shifting inefficient dollars to efficient dollars; this is just a wholesale increase! What gives? Did I suddenly develop a taste for caviar and somehow forgot about it? Are we perhaps just wasting more food now? Is it the recession causing food prices to increase?
Gifts and fuel also went up a lot but the gifts half is seasonal and the fuel issue is difficult to compare because the car we had at the time nearly died on Boxing Day and thus in January was on its last legs if we were even using it at all. So while disturbing this increase does sort of make sense.
Transit/Grooming/Politics can be explained pretty easily also, I bought my January bus pass early and the February one late so that transaction didn’t show up in January at all. I guess I didn’t get a haircut in January whereas both the kid and I got haircuts in April, and there weren’t any pending elections in January unlike April.
So what are my goals this time around? I don’t want to cut down on groceries per se but I do want to make sure I’m always getting a fair price and not wasting too much and perhaps watch the fast food spending a bit although the end of the television season and with it Pizza Mondays that will probably happen on its own.
