Eight months down, four to go.
I’m a little later than intended with this post. My post on the Indue cashless debit card trial took quite a bit of time to research, and I finally posted it right near the end of February, so this post took a bit of a back seat.
After a fabulous January result, this month is rather less successful on the overall savings rate – I managed 36.69% in regular savings, but this was offset by -16.49% net cash flow, for a total of 20.20% for February.
February is a ‘high expense’ month because my car registration and insurance are due, so that’s a significant outgoing all at once because I pay for the whole year. This is actually the least expensive option, as you don’t lose money to the slight premium that gets charged for splitting payments across the year. This is what caused the hit to my net cash flow, although it does all ‘come out in the wash’ once I average it out over the year.
Naturally, it’s the good old discretionary spending that’s the main issue. This month came in at more than $300 over budget in this category – eating out/takeaway being the big culprit here. Part of that is down to having gone to a conference interstate, so being away meant buying meals. I’ll make a little of it back in allowances once I put the claim in through work, but it won’t cover everything (the colleague that also attended and I did rather spoil ourselves, though 🙂 ).
One thing that is pleasing is that the majority of my main budget categories are either almost exactly on target – as in, they’re within a few dollars either way – or they’re less than $100 over or under. I reckon I can live with that at the moment. 🙂
FIRE for One 
I wish I could track my expenses the way you do.
I certainly used to.
Now I use the Barefoot method, and, like you say, we seem to be out in front.
Well done on your wins – i will take them over a loss any day!
Shaun
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Normally I’d just do the Barefoot thing, but I wanted to see if I could do better, and also to get an idea of just where my money goes. 🙂
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