Week 2: doing better!

This week, I'm going to consult the Money Manager in my USAA bank account. I've set a goal limit for each line item, and it tracks my spending from my credit card, debit card, and Target card. It doesn't track my husband's spending, so that's the only thing really missing. Our spending is tracked for the entire month of January, so this chart shows the past 14 days.  The bars are categorized by percentage of budgeted spending, not by amount.Green means good, orange means "getting closer" and red means "ahhhhhhhhhhhhh"

  

When I first viewed this list I thought, "we're doing great!" but then I thought, "we bought gas, why isn't it here" and we had some other purchases not reflected.  I went back to review our checking account and how things were categorized, I saw some things were left out. So, I had to go into the checking area and categorize some items.  This is what it looked like at the end.

Our mortgage was paid.  We've done some charitable giving.  One of our goals was to meet numbers for Charitable giving, we are at about 1/4 of the bar, and half way through the month.... hmmm... we'll have to work on that item. We've paid one phone related bill - our internet. The rest of that line item goes to the cell phone.  The restaurants/dining line item reflects our spending over the birthday and anniversary weekend. And the ones down there are gas and groceries we've bought so far. At the very bottom is a line called "non-budgeted spending" and that's a catch-all for "other" which I would also like to keep really really low over time. 

  

This week I've done very well in not spending anything outside of groceries and gas (allowable). I've saved some items for reusing.  I've gone through our home to make it neater, more useable.  I have passed on some baby clothes to help another family save money! I announce this week to be a complete success! I can't wait to see how the rest of the month goes.