Welcome to  tracking of income and expenses for the month. Please note that I get paid on the last day of the month so my cash flow net effect will usually be negative until the last day of the month.

I decided to implement a new strategy this month to track the money I save. I created an account in ING called Coupon savings and every time I save money with a coupon I am going to transfer that amount from my Electric Orange account to a savings account. This will give me an exact figure for the amount of money I am saving by using coupons when I go shopping.

I used coupons that came to a total of $7.55 today when I went grocery shopping so this money has been transferred to my savings account.

I got paid earlier this month so my salary was included in the month end excel spreadsheet.

Expenses for the month were all over the place. Some were way below and others were above budget.

Net effect: $93.57

I came out ahead this month which was really good considering that I went over my budget in some areas. I did not get any money from Google this month because even though my readership went up (thank you RSS subscribers!!!!) I guess people were not clicking as much.

The good thing is that I was not counting on this money from Adsense but treat it as a nice surprise when it comes.

I spent $154.83 on food which was over my budget of $125 for the month. I guess I could have waited until Thursday to get the food and roll it into January’s budget but I needed to get my yogurt today since the coupons expired on the 31st.

gaspumpI only spent $22.35 on gas this month out of a budget of $60. This was due to me driving out of town less and because gas prices have been dropping steadily in the last few days.

My electric bill this month was $35 dollars which was below budget but the preview of next month shows that the bill is $82 so I have to spend more money there. Luckily this amount is already budgeted for and I will be working on reducing that for the February bill.

I will see you guys and gals later as I continue my journey to save money and become debt free!!!!