Spending Sucess for 2013

How did your year go?  Did you track your spending?  Is it one of your goals to do that this year?

I started tracking my expenses when I decided that I needed to set a budget on how much we spent.  There are tons of deals out there to get and I wanted to make sure that I was making the things that we needed a priority and skipping the other deals.  Keeping all my receipts helps me to do that.  I track all of my receipts every month and keep them in a folded paper with the front side listing the spending and the back listing the savings.  During the month, I also list the spending in a notebook just in case the receipt folder goes missing because it happens.  The yearly totals are in the front so I can see how many months were under my $160 budget and how many were over.  It does happen!!

Here is how we did for 2013:


Month                   Spending            Savings

January                 $133.58              $571.93
February               $248.59              $710.49
March                   $135.06              $61.08
April                      $102.31              $435.51
May                      $124.08              $498.60
June                      $105.47              $637.09
July                       $80.87                $110.98
August                  $158.74              $452.27
September            $150.31              $440.34
October                $71.50                $515.54
November            $194.29              $701.60
December            $73.44                $323.73

Totals                   $1577.74             $5459.16

Average Monthly Spending $131.48

I am super excited to only have two months of spending over budget (one where I stocked up on chicken and ground beef at the beginning of the year and one at the end where I had to buy a certain amount to get a deal on a turkey).  I still ended up have a monthly way under budget at $131.48 so I think that I did a great job overall.

I would love to hear how you did so leave a note and let me know.  What are your goals for 2014?  We are keeping the same budget this year and hoping that we will have equally good results.  I wish you all the best in the new year.