I ended up in the black again in September and it felt good to see that positive $597.71 on my spreadsheet. This was partly due to some advertising on the blog as well as redeeming cash back points and using them for daily purchases. I am showing that I bought the newspaper but only redeemed $1 in coupons for the whole month. This does not look right to me as I am sure that I used more coupons than that, but in any case I have spent $26 on buying coupons and redeemed $83.05 giving me a gain of $53.05 on my couponing adventures.
I overspent on my personal and household budget by $86.24 (bad girl!!!) but underspent on my food budget by $72.93 (good girl!!!). I spent $47.53 on gas for the month, leaving me with $12.47 on my budget if I wanted to drive some more.
I made some bigger than normal snowflake payments on my two personal loans, with the goal of having them fully paid in December of this year so that I can be debt free.
I received a total of $13.79 from Lending Club and $1.78 from Prosper and that was the total of my investments for the month, with me making one new loan of $25 to someone at Lending Club.
Way to go!
It’s always wise to know your “books” and control expanses, all a matter of power and will. If you have everything organized, you know what is it you need to buy and what can be delayed to another time. Keep up the good job!
Nice work on underspending in the food category. That is the next major item I envision being able to get a handle on in my personal budget. Smaller packages costing more at the supermarket definitely can sneak up on your budget and I want to investigate my options for cutting that down. I’m sure your blog will point me in the right direction for that.
Being debt free for the start of the New Year, what a good goal! Congrats on being in the black again!
What an incredible site/blog you have! You’re not just focusing on debt-reduction, saving for a cruise, or how to get groceries for free with coupons! But a real look at a real person’s budget. Awesome stuff.
TY
I wish I could be debt free at the end of the year! 🙂
Well Jasmine it took me a few years to get to this point…..so just keep plugging away at it and soon you will be able to make the same statement.
By the way, you mentioned “coupons” in your post, I am wondering what are those?… and how to use them?
Coupons are those items with a bar code on the bottom that manufacturers use to give you a discount. You mainly get them off the Sunday newspaper but there are other ways such as from magazines etc.
It’s almost Christmas. Must save save save to have something for everyone..
Underspending on the food budget is a good thing for your health atleast, as long as junk food was less and vegetables were more. 🙂