Okay folks, I decided to try something new today. I often see spending reports on other blogs. And I’ve been part of enough online personal finance forums to know that people love to see others’ budgets. Heck, some forums thrive on shredding strangers’ budgets and telling people they are spending wrong (for the record, I think that’s weird). But since this is a personal finance blog, I thought it made sense to show you a little of my personal finances. Thus, for the first time, I am bringing to you my monthly spending report.
This is an experiment and I’m not going to commit to anything at this point. If you like seeing these, let me know. If you don’t, let me know that too! And if you want to see them but don’t see the things you are interested in, give me some feedback. I’m open to suggestions.
What is a Monthly Spending Report?
Wayyyyy back when I first created this blog, I wrote about budgets. A budget is a plan for how you are going to spend your money.
A spending report, then, is a record of what you actually spent. Chances are most of your spending isn’t going to perfectly align with your planned budget. For instance, you may estimate that your electricity bill will be $70 and then it ends up being $76. Or you might budget $200 for eating out/entertainment and end up being sick one weekend and only spending $160 for the month.
The point is, a spending report is what really happened vs what you expected to happen (your budget). For my military readers, you could think of building your spending report as the data compilation portion of your debrief for the month.
So I’m going to share with you my actual spending from January 2019, then I’ll talk about each of the items a little bit to explain what happened.
January 2019 Monthly Spending Report
My total personal spending for January was $1707.87. This is under the average. Allow me to explain.
Of note, I’m a single human caring for one dog. My car is paid off, I don’t have any debt other than a mortgage on my rental property, and I don’t want a giant house (been there, done that). All of those things affect my numbers, so if you look at this and anything seems surprising that might be why.
Housing Expenses – $1163.24
My rent was normal. Unlike last year when I was living in DC with its extremely expensive housing, I now live in a fairly low cost of living area. I rent out a nice 2-bedroom patio home in a gated community for $1010/month, including a small amount for pet rent for my dog. I pay an extra $1.95/month for the convenience of having my rent auto-paid so I don’t have to worry about checks or remembering the due date.
My utilities were low this month ($151.29) because I prepaid several month’s worth of water/sewer/trash, electricity, and gas a while back. Without prepaying those amounts, my monthly utility cost would be closer to $300. I do include cable/internet and my cell phone bill in my utilities cost, because I consider internet and a phone line to be near requirements these days.
Insurance – $29.00
While prepaying my utilities isn’t normal, I do normally pay my renters and car insurance ahead of time. Some companies will offer you a discount if you do it this way, so if you have some maneuver space in your budget that would allow this, I recommend looking into it.
The $29 pays for my SGLI coverage – $400,000 in term life insurance. I’ve been considering getting rid of this, but for now I’m keeping it.
Groceries – $96.92
My grocery spending only includes actual food and drink meant for home preparation. I lump restaurant food into my entertainment budget, dog food under pet care, and toiletries under Miscellaneous. I know some people count all of those things as groceries but it just doesn’t make sense in my head that way.
Under $100 probably seems pretty low to you – it is to me, too. I don’t spend a lot on groceries, but this is lower than normal. There are two reasons:
- I had a TDY (temporary duty/work trip) for four days during the month, so that eliminated 12 meals
- I decided to eat a lot of the food in my freezer, so I actually skipped one shopping trip
Normally my grocery total will be closer to $150 or so. I do eat pretty well – lots of organic produce and dairy, and I frequently eat seafood – but I also shop smartly and don’t eat much red meat.
Entertainment – $199.98
My entertainment spending, on the other hand, was much higher than normal. That’s because I paid for two plays in advance that are both happening in February. Those two events alone made up nearly half this total.
I also ate out a little more than usual because I had friends TDY here, so I bought more food at the work cafe and went out to eat during the week a few times. The $104 spent on eating out was for 12 meals. Some of them were cheap on-the-go breakfasts at work (those generally cost $1.50-$3). And remember how I said I live in a LCOL area now? You can easily find a large and good quality sitdown meal for under $15. That’s pretty nice!
The $104 on eating out even included an incredible steak dinner for $29 after tax and 20% tip. I’m telling you, living in a LCOL area is something else.
Transportation and Car Repairs/Maintenance – $101.43
$40 to gas, plus $61 to an oil change where I also spent a little buying dashboard and glass cleaning wipes.
Pet Care – $50.90
I buy about one giant bag of Hill’s Science Diet for my dog every month for about $45 + tax. He’s a 65lb active dog, so he eats a fair amount. I’ve tried changing his diet and he won’t eat anything else. Plus, I’ve talked to several veterinarians and all have said this is a good choice for his food. Science Diet it is!
Charity – $20.00
I normally have paycheck deductions going to the Combined Federal Campaign and the Air Force Assistance Fund. For some reason my January check didn’t include the CFC deductions…I need to figure out why.
I also have a savings account for a sinking fund where I save money for additional charitable contributions, but I didn’t disburse any from there last month.
Miscellaneous – $46.40
This could literally be anything. I like having a catch-all category for the things that aren’t easily lumped in elsewhere. Sometimes it’s a mug. Sometimes it’s paper towels. Whatever. This month I spent $2.46 on glow-in-the-dark tape that I plan to attach to some camping gear because I think it’d be handy to be able to find it easily at night. That’s what this category is for.
Personal Total – $1707.87
Like I said this is lower than normal. You can see this month included no expenses for personal travel, clothing/uniforms, or gifts. Plus I spent lightly on utilities, insurance, and groceries.
That being said, it’s been a long while since I last calculated my spending this way (I normally deduct from the budget, not add it up) and it’s less than I was expecting. Interesting. I’ll have to see what ends up happening through the year. I knew I was spending less here than DC, but not “I ate out 12 times and it only cost $104” less!
I didn’t include my savings/investments because those aren’t really “spending.” I do consider taxes to be spending (it’s what I pay to live in the US) but I don’t normally see that on spending reports so I dunno, I figured it wasn’t something people cared about? And my rental property and blog expenses aren’t applicable to most people the way grocery and transportation expenses are, so I left those off too. Le me know what you think about those.
Business Travel – $694.71
While the above amounts show normal spending, I did also spend nearly $700 more this month. But it wasn’t money I would’ve spent on my own, so I’m accounting for it separately. This money was spent for a 4-day TDY trip, and I get reimbursed after I return home.
This $695 includes:
- Three hotel nights
- Rental car
- Fuel for the rental car
- Meals while I was away
- Parking at the airport
- Dog boarding and day care
The reimbursement covers all of this (I spend a little less on food so that my dog boarding is paid for – normally it wouldn’t be) so it doesn’t feel right to include in my personal spending total. But it does affect my grocery bill, utilities, fuel to drive to the airport, etc so I still wanted to show it.
If you include this spending in my monthly spending report, January 2019 cost me $2402.58.
So that’s my spending report. Like I said I’m trying this as an experiment to see if it’s interesting to you, the readers. Let me know by commenting here or hit me up on social media. I’m not tied to anything!
Nice layout of the spending. I like that it’s in Excel and written form for those who learn differently. 😁
And $29 isn’t bad at all for a steak dinner w/ tip. Nice!
Everything seems pretty standard, or maybe I’m not critical enough to find something to troll about in the comments. 😂
It was a REALLY good steak too. Rubbed with a spice blend, topped with grilled peppers and goat cheese. Served with potatoes and salad. One of the top 5 steaks I’ve ever had 🤤
I need to try this LCOL thing!! $29 for a nice steak dinner!? I’ve lived in 3 HCOL cities over the past 5 years so I am clearly not doing this whole FI thing correctly haha
Well if it makes you feel better, the salaries for non-government people are also much lower than yours. There is some benefit to those HCOL areas!
Okay, you have to PAY for the convenience of auto paid rent?? That seems bonkers because it saves a heck of a lot more than that on the property management side! Annoying, but still worth it I suppose. And work expenses definitely don’t belong here, in my opinion 🙂
Yeah, apparently it’s standard for the area?
Thanks, MilDollar, I always enjoy reading spending reports!
You wrote “The $29 pays for my SGLI coverage – $400,000 in term life insurance. I’ve been considering getting rid of this, but for now I’m keeping it.” A minor reason for keeping SGLI is the option to buy VGLI when you leave the military. You might not need life insurance now and you probably won’t need it later, but VGLI is guaranteed coverage without underwriting. It’s more expensive than standard term insurance, but if you’re uninsurable then VGLI is cheaper than any other policy.
If something changes in your life before you retire, and if you were declared uninsurable for some reason, then at least you’d be able to buy $400K of VGLI. Less than $350/year is probably worth keeping that option.
The minute I hung up my uniform, however, I canceled all of my life insurance. We were financially independent by then, and if I die then my spouse doesn’t need to replace any of my income.
Thanks Doug, good point!
looks cheap to me. a thousand bucks to rent a house where you can have your dog is exceptional. our cost with no mortgage is close to 700 for taxes/fees/insurance/maint. and we own the damned thing outright. in reality it’s much less most months but when you replace a roof on an old place the average stays high for a long time.
i like the report. no booze? i can’t even bring myself to disclose that expense for us in real numbers, only to hint that it’s really high!
I don’t drink much alcohol, and I’d purchased a 12 pack in December so no booze expenses at all in January. But even with a beer, a typical night out at our favorite restaurant is about $18 after tip unless you get a steak.
I like to see spending reports, and this one is no exception! As someone who used to travel a lot for work, I realize how much those trips can throw off your tracking and spending… and then when you get reimbursed, is that a negative spend (?) or is it income‽ A couple times, I even had a month with $0 total spend because a few larger reimbursements were delayed until later months.
And yes, LCOL areas make “Treat Yoself” a little easier on the budget!
Nice use of the interrobang 😉
Yeah I don’t know how I feel about it. Angela says no, but they *do* impact my spending so it feels like a more thorough picture if I include it. I dunno. Something to think about over the next month.
THAT’S IT, I’M OUTTA HERE. $104 on 12 meals out is INSANE and I’m not even going to touch the rent category *cries*
To be fair half of those meals were the cheap breakfasts, but yeah. My fancy work breakfast is a massive breakfast sandwich for $3 or maybe the $4.50 breakfast burrito that is the size of a Chipotle burrito. And our work cafe is really good. Most of the meals will make 1.5-2 servings, and they usually run $6-$8 each. Then in town I can get sit down meals at most places for $12-$15 after tip. Crazy!
As a fellow service member, I include my TDY costs as expenses until reimbursement – then I ‘cancel’ the expenses. If the reimbursement exceeds the TDY costs (which it should as those rates as amazing!), then the excess is ‘income’.
It takes an extra minute or 2 to go back to the month to adjust it, but I think for the real monthly and annual spending report, it makes it more accurate.
Thanks for sharing!
That makes sense to me, especially considering how it can sometimes take awhile to be reimbursed. Thanks!
I keep track of all TDY inflows and outflows so my budgeting software matches my actual bank records. It’s important to me to keep track of every single penny; however, it is difficult to reconcile that expense category with the fact that it won’t exist as an expense once I retire. I also count TDY reimbursements as income since it’s still real money coming to me to invest, but again if you look at my records from the last few years it looks like I got lazy on saving because there was a two year period where I was sent out on TDY often enough to count for a 13th month of pay each year.
I like to see detailed expenses of others. Although not military, I do get reimbursed for the costs associated with continuing education. Sometimes I make a few extra dollars when driving distances. I try to plan conferences around places I’d like to visit.