A few months ago I signed up for Mint.com. Mint.com is a website that links to your accounts and keeps track of your spending. Its free, so I signed up. I linked the account I wanted to keep track of and maybe checked it a few times..then I forgot about it.
A week ago, I decided to log back in. I then used one of the tools available that shows you in graph form where your money went. I went back to October and checked our food expenditures. Anything I labeled as food or was automatically labeled by the site as food purchases were added into the portion of the graph. Wow, was I surprised when I saw the totals. I had just commented to someone that maybe we spend $800 to $900 in food..including fast food..oh boy, was I wrong. My total for the month of October was over $1500.
$1500!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is a lot of money. Almost double the amount I though I had spent..DOUBLE.
What a rude awakening. No wonder our budget is so out of control. I had no idea it was so much. I had no clue what I was spending.
I made our December budget yesterday. I only budgeted $600 for the whole month. Is that reasonable, is it realistic? I am not sure but I know it can't be much more because our goals to pay off debt are very important to us. Very important. I am hoping that $300 twice a month is going to cut it. And only eating out 2 times a month. Hmmm..we don't have much luck with limiting the eating out. But, we have to be strict.
I'm a little curious about November, not because I expect much difference, but because I was becoming more aware of what I was spending. Apparently, not as aware as I thought.
It would be interesting to see though.
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