Wednesday 2 October 2013

September 2013 Expenditure Tracker

This is my second month of my reset expectations and the first where my expenditure smoothing technique has started to come into effect (i.e. whereby I save money in one month to offset future expenditures).  This month had so many one off large expenditure items that it would have taken almost my whole wage if I had not used the smoothing technique.


ItemSep 2013Target (new)Over/(Under)Target (old)Over/(Under)
Share Investments+$1,094+$2,500-$1,406+$2,000-$906
Offset Acct.+$169+$2,400-$2,231+$3,500-$3,331
Personal expenditure+$5,828+$2,800+$3,028+$2,200+$3,628

As you can see above I once again underperformed all of my old and new expenditure goals however given the different expenditures I had due I am not as disappointed as I would normally be.  This was just one of those months that happen every so often where everything falls due and there is no way of getting around this.

The major movements in my 3 accounts are discussed below.  I will deal with the personal expenditure first (as this pretty much drove my whole result)

  • Personal expenditure
    • My credit card bill this month was ~$3,700 which is significantly more than my reset amount - this alone was enough to break the budget
      • However offsetting this was ~$1,800 which I had put away previously
      • This still left a significant amount which had to be cash covered but it was definitely not as bad as it could have been!
    • I put away ~$1,000 to cover future expenditures in the month which obviously detracted from my cash balance (and somewhat neutered the effect of the amount that I was funding my credit card bill with)
    • I had significant cash expenses this month including
      • A cash wedding present - these always hurt and there is no way of getting around them
      • Paying for flights and accommodation for my overseas holiday in November - this was the major culprit
  • Home Loan Offset account
    • With the expenditure smoothing that I was doing above, I was able to put $1,000 into my home loan offset account for the month which I was pretty happy about given the number of expenses I had due this month
    • However offsetting this was that a lot of annual bills fell due this month including my annual insurance bill as well as my quarterly rates bill
    • The net effect of this was the small increase seen above
  • Share investments
    • I actually still have quite a lot of cash sitting in my share investment account and I will not be transferring money into this account until I work out where I can place the cash
    • As I recently mentioned I am re-evaluating the stocks in my portfolio and I will start moving back into shares once I work out where there is value in the market
On a cumulative basis my (reset) performance is as follows:

ItemAug 13 -Sep 13Target (new)Over/(Under)Jan 13 -Sep 13Target (old)Over/(Under)
Share Investments+$2,188+$5,000-$2,812+$16,187+$18,000-$1,813
Offset Acct.+$2,319+$4,800-$2,481+$8,848+$31,500-$22,652
Personal expenditure+$11,420+$4,800+$5,820+$43,322+$19,800+$23,522

Unfortunately I am still way out on my expectations.  I am hoping it starts to come back in the coming months with my tax return and the payment of my bonus as well as more controlled expenditure (perversely I spend much less when I go overseas because I tend to pay most of the expense in advance).  I did a quick calculation of October and I think my personal expenses will be much more in control over this coming month.

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