Whew it is time to look at one full month of finances and see how I came out in the end. I was in the black again for the month even after making a few larger than normal debt snowflake payments and a bit of overspending. I came out at $139.53 in the black after getting my paycheck and buying some more groceries in a last minute rush late in the evening.
I spent $22.83 on gas for the month, leaving me with $37.17 in the budget for the month. I will be travelling for Easter so I am going to use up that balance quickly but I have not decided yet if it will be a rollover or just part of my regular zero based budget for the month.
I was over my electricity budget by $25 but I just got the statement for next month and it is now going to be within the budgeted range. My utilities bills will be lower because I also cut the cable and should be paying about $50 less than before.
I changed my mindset about spending and because of that I was able to finally be free of credit card debt by making about $600 in extra payments through various snowflaking methods. Some of my snowflakes came from Lending Club (total income $13.19) and Prosper (total income) $10.07 and some came from advertising on the blog but I made sure to pay more towards debt than I used to splurge on myself or to put into savings and I am now moving on to tackling the car loan since it has the next highest interest (and balance too!!!!) of my debt.
I bought one newspaper at $3 and redeemed $12.75 in coupons, giving me a net of $9.75 for the month in coupon earnings. My coupon spending for the year is $12, redemption is $43.22 which is a net ‘profit’ of $31.22 from using coupons. I will continue to buy at least the first batch of coupons every month since that has the most inserts in order to maximize my coupon usage.
Wow! $23 for gas is good…I spend $45 a month but I’m trying to lower that as much as possible.
Well I live close to work and (obviously) don’t go out much. I already know that April and May will be higher because I have a few events to attend.
You are going to have to rely on these tips and more to survive given the changes to our society the Marxists of the Democratic party are doing to us! Heaven help us.
Thanks great 🙂 well done for being back in the black!
wow i would have never realized that by buying the newspaper I could save money using the coupons….. it also depends of the newspaper… coupons I usually see are for mc donalds, etc
btw I forgot to ask..now with the new gas prices what do you do? I mean u have to use u r car or the transportation but with all these new gas hikes then u r budget will go crazy, how often do you use your car?
I use my car every day but I live close to all the places that I need to go. I have only been using about 25% of my gas budget in the low priced months, so when the price of gas gets higher then I use more of the budget. I roll the money over (sort of like the envelope system) so if my budget is $10 and I only use $5 in one month then I have that $5 PLUS the $10 for the next month….so I can spend more the second month but still be within my budget.