April 2013 Expenditure Tracker

April was an interesting month for me in terms of my expenditure tracker.  Although it wasn't spread evenly, I saved almost exactly how much I wanted to this month and my personal expenditure overspend was the lowest it has been since I started tracking it over a year ago.  Overall this was a pleasing outcome however on a cumulative basis, March 2013 is really still hurting me.

Item	Apr 2013	Target	Over/(Under)
Share Investments	+$11,094	+$2,000	+$9,094
Offset Acct.	-$6,184	+$3,500	-$9,684
Personal expenditure	+$2,710	+$2,200	+$510

The major causes for the movements in my 3 accounts are listed below

• Share Investments
• As you can see above I had a large increase in my share investment account this month
• Most of this was due to a transfer of funds from my home loan offset account into my trading account
• I did a few trades (including my investment in my employee share investment plan as well as the purchase of a small amount of broad based Australian index funds) however for the most part this amount is still in cash
• I'm going to deploy a large amount of this into the share market in the coming weeks.  The timing isn't optimal given how hard the share market has run however I think there may be some opportunities in the resources sector
  
• Home Loan Offset Account
• I actually saved almost exactly how much I planned to from my wage into my offset account this month
• The reason that it is down is because of the large transfer of funds from this offset account into my trading account mentioned above
• My investment property is currently virtually positively geared (which isn't a great thing because it is a very cheap cost of financing my other investments if I keep it negative) so I am probably going to ease up on investments in this account in the next few months
  
• Personal expenditure
• I had a pretty interesting experience this month with my personal expenditure.  At the start of the month I had virtually no cash left and wrote a post on how I attempted to conserve cash when things were tight
• As a result a lot of expenditures for this month went on my credit card.  This had the effect of pushing out some big expenditures into next month's credit card bill (which has already blown my May 2013 personal expenditure target).  
• My rent expense normalised from last month though is at a higher level than before I moved out of home (as is to be expected)

On a cumulative basis my performance for April 2013 can be seen below:

Item	Jan 13 - Apr 13	Target	Over/(Under)
Share Investments	+$5,074	+$8,000	-$2,926
Offset Acct.	+$6,543	+$14,000	-$7,457
Personal expenditure	+$17,825	+$8,800	+$9,025

As you can see my expenditure tracker is still the big negative drag and this was largely because of March 2013.  Interestingly if you compare to where I was at in April 2012, it is a rather similar position.  I am going to continue to work on my current expenditure and savings goals instead of resetting them because I think they are achievable.

I'm still going to blow my personal expenditure forecasts for next month although I am looking at ways of tracking my expenditure more in real time so I am not constantly lamenting it at months end like I have been in these posts.

You May Also Be Interested In:
March 2013 Expenditure Tracker
Expenditure Tracker - All Posts
April 2013 Net Worth
Surviving until pay-day: When things get tight