27 and Frugal

To be completely open and honest with you, I’ll go over my monthly expenses and budget with a post each month.

How’d I do this month?

Car Payment: $585/$300 (but this is good)
Groceries: $254/$200
Gas: $148/$115
Cell: $86/$75 (ugh)
Personal Care: $28/$20
Bars: $27/$20
Entertainment: $77/$50
Shopping: $65/$300 (yay!)
Bills & Utilities: $114/$200
Restaurants: $63/$75
Student Loan: $162
Discover Card Payment: $150

The Good

Shopping
The only items I purchased this month was a sweater from Zara, a video game (split it with the bf) and my ear warming wrap. Very happy with my spending in this category.

Eating Out
It feels like I dined out quite often this month, but when I did, I went cheap. My friends and I frequent relatively affordable places anyway. I always order water, never alcoholic drinks (one of the places we ate at was byob!), and never appetizers. These habits keep my meals between $8-15. Also, my boyfriend and I tend to do take out on the weekends so this saves us from having to tip.

The Bad

Cell Phone
Again! I know, I know! I know! I’m working on it! Ugh!

Car Payment
This is actually a good thing! I just wanted to explain it a bit. My normal monthly car payment is $216/month. However, I have dwindled the balance down so much that I am just going to send in some big payments (as I did this month) in December and January and, hopefully, January should be my last car payment! So any spare $25 or $50 or $100 I’ve had throughout the month, after savings, I sent a payment over. I didn’t even realize how much I ended up sending until looking over these expenses earlier today.

Groceries
I know what got me here. I had company over one weekend and I wanted to make a special meal for them, so I just bought the specific ingredients at full price. That definitely did me in.

Personal Care
I bought some Lush products when I brought my visiting family to the local mall. I wouldn’t have even gone to the mall at all if I were by myself.

Bars
Actually, this is fine. There was one dinner out that my boyfriend paid for and I just picked up beer to bring home, so that evened out. Since I was under for eating out, being over budget here is fine. Treating myself to Blue Moon pushed me over.

Entertainment
Well, $40 of this is from my unplanned Atlantic City trip. That includes club cover and food. I didn’t make any other purchases there (nope, no gambling!). $9 is for netflix and $28 was the indoor rock climbing.

Gas
Not quite sure what happened here since I didn’t travel much. I will increase this to $200 for December since I will be to visiting family for the holidays.

Adjustments

I am increasing my gas budget to accommodate holiday travels. Entertainment is going up to $150 because I will probably engage in family/friend festivities throughout the month of December. I will move personal care up to $40 but I shouldn’t need anything. However, I have a feeling that I might sneak in a new soap for myself while I’m gift shopping. I’m leaving the restaurants the same and pushing my alcohol budget to $25.

I know December will be a tricky month with all the shopping. I really hate shopping! So I’ve given myself a gift budget of $300. I don’t have too many people to buy for and probably won’t have to spend all that, but I just wanted to be safe. I am also decreasing my personal shopping limit to $100, since I really shouldn’t be buying any goodies for myself anyway!