Month 1: The Verdict

Well, Decision Day was a few days into June so we're nearing completion of our first month of trying a budget, putting lots of effort into selling our stuff and making extra money. But let's just jump straight into confession time.

AND THE GRAND TOTAL SPENT is: $894.86. Ouch. The breakdown:

Groceries:  $322.52

Dining Out / Fast Food: $136.87

Entertainment: $33.53

Laura Personal: $70.33

Joe Personal: $93.85

Anything Else: $237.76

We decided to immediately subtract groceries, since just about everything we bought was neccesity. Minus some salted caramels. We did keep in mind that we had a guest this month that we really wanted to treat to some fun times. We also had an unexpected cat expense. So that brought us down to the $300 range pretty quickly.

Right away I saw at least $40 from my personal spending that was unnecessary. Had I not spent it I would have brought myself well below the alloted $40 per month. Joe spent around $30 on drinks of various kinds that he knows he didn't need, as well as a couple games from Steam. We're both going to be much more mindful in July. We have no birthdays and no company planned. Joe should be back to work within a week. This should be a great month for savings. Plus I ended up writing to Giant Eagle for absolutely ruining Joe's birthday cookie pizza cake I ordered and they might even reimburse me! Never hurts to ask.

I feel like we did well with selling to make extra money. I worked a fair amount of overtime compared to the zero overtime hours I was putting in before. I even took a couple vacation days when my friend Robyn visited. It was a very fun mini-vacation and even though I didn't leave Columbus, it was a fantastic 3 days. We went out to eat a few times and treated her to a dinner, some drinks, and some time at the gun range. I really wish we could have done more, but we're fairly certain she had a good time in Columbus with us. Maybe the next time we meet up things will be different financially.

We made a good amount of extra money from selling too. Without factoring in eBay fees from a few items, our total was $405.97. We used a combination of eBay, Craigslist, and OfferUp. I think for putting only a couple extra hours of time in that isn't too bad, really. It's an additional $405.97 that we wouldn't have made otherwise. Oh, and Joe took some rolls of change to the bank that's been sitting around forever. Almost $20 right there!

Overall I'm a little disappointed with our spending, but I'm absolutely thrilled that we've stayed on top of tracking everything and we're both being mindful about the money we are spending. We stop ourselves and say "Do we really need this?" more than we ever have. We're still breaking habits as you can see but I certainly feel like we've made progress.