On June 1 I opened a new note on my phone and titled it "every single dollar." By June 30 it had 94 lines, including a $2.49 gas station coffee I bought while getting gas, a $1.25 parking meter by the lake and one very honest entry that just said "fries, again."
I've been budgeting with buckets since March, but buckets only tell you what you planned. I wanted to know what actually happened. So for one month I wrote down every purchase within a few minutes of making it, then moved everything into the club sheet each Sunday.
June had two paychecks of $1,342, which is $2,684. I also made $224 pet sitting and walking dogs for neighbors. That's $2,908 for the month. It's also very close to what I take home in an average month once you count the two months a year with a third paycheck, which made June a good test.
June was also the first month after my credit card was paid off. The $480 a paycheck that used to go to the card now goes to my student loans, so my loan payment went up to $1,100 a month. That's the biggest line on the page, and I liked seeing it there.
Where the $2,908 went
- Student loans: $1,100
- Emergency fund: $740
- Rent to my parents: $300
- Car insurance share to my dad: $95
- Gas: $82
- Car line (repair savings): $50
- Phone line: $35
- Subscriptions: $27
- Lunches and coffee: $146
- Eating out and fun: $188
- Toiletries and drugstore: $41
- Haircut: $48
- Father's Day gift: $34
- Parking and tolls: $22
That adds up to $2,908. The emergency fund line includes $600 I planned to save plus $140 left in checking on June 30 that I swept over before I could find a use for it.
The two categories that surprised me
The first was lunches and coffee. I would have guessed $80. It was $146. I work from home two days a week and pack lunch most of the other three, but "most" was carrying a lot of weight. Eleven separate purchases, nearly all of them on days I left the house in a hurry, plus coffees that were never more than $5 and somehow added up to $39. None of it felt like spending while it was happening.
The second was eating out and fun. $188 isn't wild, and it includes $38 for my share of Priya's birthday picnic at Gillson Park, which I'd pay again tomorrow. But when I looked at the list, about $90 of it was food I ordered or picked up because I didn't feel like dealing with dinner on a night when my parents were out. That's the same habit that built my credit card balance in Rogers Park, just smaller. Seeing it in writing was a little embarrassing.
What didn't surprise me: the car. Gas at $82 is normal for my commute to Skokie, and the $50 car line is the $25 a paycheck I set aside for repairs. My 2012 Corolla has been fine so far. I'm not going to say that too loudly.
What I'm changing for July
I'm not cutting anything dramatic. The month mostly went the way I planned, and the big lines (loans, savings, my parents) were exactly right. Two small changes:
I'm packing lunch the night before on office days, not the morning of, because the morning version only happens when I'm not running late, which is never. And I'm going to start cooking Sunday dinner for the family once a week. It gives my mom a night off, it means I learn a few meals I can make on a weeknight, and it means there are leftovers in the fridge with my name on them, which is the cheapest defense against "fries, again."
I also learned I don't need to track to the dollar forever. It took maybe five minutes a day, which isn't much, but the real value was the one month of honest data. I'll do it again in the winter to see if anything drifted.
One more number I checked this month: my credit score went from 668 in March to 709. The card being gone did most of that. Small win.
