April 2014 Expenditure Tracker

As outlined in my April 2014 Net Worth post yesterday, this month (like March 2014) was not great for me in terms of keeping control of my budget and expenses.  I had several large expenses combined with having to pay off a large credit card bill from the previous month which left me very cash poor.  My detailed expenditure tracker is below.

April 2014 Expenditure Tracker

Item	Apr 2014	Monthly Target	Perf. vs Target
Accommodation / Living expenses	$2,071	$2,246	-$175
Car expenses	$1,782	$692	+$1,090
Health / Well being expenses	$804	$566	+$238
Entertainment / Personal expenses	$1,114	$1,230	-$117
Travel expenses	$0	$675	-$675
Other 'big' expenses	$2,500	$3,508	-$1,008
Savings / Investments	$-968	$1,051	-$2,019

If we look at the major line items in my tracker above

• Accommodation and living expenses
• Although it looked like I outperformed my target for this month it was actually quite an expensive month.  I have started entertaining more at my apartment so my groceries bill was quite high and I also spent a fair bit extra on clothes
• The only reason this category came in within budget was because I did not have to pay my apartment bond nor did I have any expenditure on things for my apartment
•  Car expenses
• This  was the category that absolutely blew everything out of the water this month
• I budgeted that I would have $1,500 in maintenance costs for the year however I ended up having to spend more than that on just one service
• Health / well being expenses
• This category was also worse than expected.  My increased health insurance premium really bit into my budget and I continued to spend more on some of my hobbies
• My charitable donations (which fall into this category) were also up above budget...though I'm not upset or concerned about this!
• Entertainment / personal expenses
• I actually spent far less on entertainment this month than I did last month however I think I have seriously underestimated how much I spend on gifts (I have far more weddings and bucks events than I had allowed for)
• Travel expenses
• This is the first month where I spent absolutely nothing on travel however it is not a great outcome because I didn't save anything towards my large overseas trip towards the end of this year.  I think this is going to cause me some headaches in coming months
• Other 'big' expenses
• I have mentioned several times now I am saving to get engaged and then married.  I'm not in any sort of rush although given how much the whole process costs I thought I would spread this over a longer period of time to lessen the burden
• I am saving for this exactly in line with where I want to be (although it looks like I am not saving enough towards it
• Savings / investments
• Given the significant cash flow constraints that I had coming into this month, I had to withdraw cash out of my savings...something which I abhor doing.  I am slowly paying this back with excess cash that comes in, although it certainly was a black spot on my record this month

The coming month should see somewhat of a skewed result.  Hopefully I will get a lot of my expenditure budgets back on track however I want to pay back the savings I withdrew last month and set up and deposit into a my first home saver account.

How is your budgeting going for the year?  Have you tripped up yet? Do you need to reset your expectations?

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April 2014 Net Worth: 489,000 (+0.3%)
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