I came in at $46.39 in the black for the month of February and although the amount is less than what I normally end the month with but that was because I had some unexpected medical expenses. I paid for those expenses with the Health Savings Account that I set up last year so my zero based budget was not adversely affected but I did need to account for the money spent because paying the doctor’s fees and the tests meant that the amount in the Health Savings Account would go down. I also had to make a transfer from savings to the HSA and since I count transfers of savings as an ‘expense’ my total expenses for the month were higher than normal.

I bought one newspaper at $3 and redeemed $5.55 worth of coupons for the month for a net gain of $2.55 for the month and a gain of $0.55 for the year with regards to coupon use. I did not go to CVS as much this month and I also did not have very good coupons that went with the items I wanted to get at WalMart. I think that in March I will use more coupons because at the end of the month I got some great looking coupons in the newspaper.

I was over my electricity budget by $64.62 because of those ridiculously high heating bills brought on by the strange winter we had this year. I did manage to stay under the total utility budget for the month because I cut the cable last year and but kept the budget the same.

I had $13.30 left on the food budget and I am proud of the fact that I managed to keep that under the total budget for the month. Remember that my ‘zero based budget’ is actually set for $200 less than my actual paycheck so that in the rare event that I do go over budget I will not be financially messed up for the month