This month I came in $359.44 in the black!!! I am finally back on track with keeping all budget spending in all categories under control so this was a great deal for me. I have been tracking my budget in Mint and in my spreadsheet and they both have been exactly on track at the end of every week, so now I can just focus on Mint and not have to enter the spreadsheet numbers manually.

I did have an unexpected outflow last month when the air conditioning in my car gave up. If I lived somewhere else it would not be so bad but it is already very hot where I live and summer is not even close yet. I got it fixed with the money in the emergency fund…which is now drained and back down to zero. I will work on rebuilding that slowly every month based on my zero based budget.

Areas where I remained under budget:

–Home: I was a little bit under budget in this area because I set the budget a little bit above what I currently pay. I have reduced it from what it was in the past and since I already signed a lease for next year I know what I will be paying in the future. I padded the budget a little bit to take into account any future rent increases so that I do not have to go back and adjust the amount.

MonthlyUpdate

–Utilities: I paid two sets of phone bills this month (one for my old prepaid plan and one for the new post paid plan) and still managed to remain under the budgeted amount for the month. My electric bill was also higher than I would have liked but in the end it all worked out.

Areas where I went over budget:

–Auto: As I mentioned earlier I had the unexpected air conditioning blow out which I had to pay for out of the emergency fund. Although I paid for this repair out of funds that were preallocated I still count the cash flow as part of the monthly cash flow because it gets treated that way in Mint and I do not want to exclude it because then I will not have a way to track the total spent on car repairs.

–Food: I really have no excuse for this and I don’t know how I managed to go over my food budget. I know that I changed the way I eat a little bit because I started to buy more frozen fruits. I have been getting bags of frozen fruits so that I can make smoothies, as a way to get more fruits into my diet. I guess they cost a little bit more and since I have also been using more than I normally did when I had fresh fruits that will count for part of the increase in cost.