This year we vowed to track our budget and post everything here so that we are being held even more accountable. I wasn’t sure how this month was going to go, primarily because of taxes. So now it is time to check out how we ultimately did with our April budget.

Last Month’s Spending

If you haven’t had a chance to check out how we have been doing so far, here is what we said that our budget was going to be this year. We decided that our goal was to cut our spending down from $6202.00 a month to a maximum of $4600.00. This is the breakdown:

• Auto – $1100.00
• Food/Drinks – $800.00
• Bills – $2100.00
• Household – $400.00
• Luxury – $400.00
• Clothing – $75.00
• Gifts – $75.00
• Misc – $50.00

TOTAL BUDGETED: $4600.00

As for our March budget report, we did not do nearly as well as we did with our February budget. I had high hopes that we could get closer to my fairly unrealistic goal of no more than $3500 per month. While we got pretty darn close in February, we did not do nearly as well in March. If you haven’t had a chance to check out that article then here is how we actually did in March:

• Auto – $1036.81
• Food/Drinks – $881.75
• Bills – $3286.41
• Household – $211.26
• Luxury – $255.81
• Clothing – $5.00
• Gifts – $91.61
• Misc – $51.40

TOTAL SPENT: $5820.05

I was obviously not nearly as thrilled with those numbers as I was with the February numbers. That being said, March was a longer month and that equaled 3 big grocery store shops instead of our standard 2 shops.

Spending in April

April ended up being an even harder month. Well, kind of. This is primarily due to taxes.

Taxes ended up almost being a wash for us this year. This is because Bryan is a W2 employee and I am 1099. This means that his taxes get taken out of each paycheck so he usually ends up getting a little bit refunded when we do our taxes.

But I am a whole different story. I own my own business (well actually 3) and due to that, I have to pay my own taxes. This means that if I don’t pay enough estimated taxes throughout the year, then I get docked come April. Fortunately for me, I am pretty darn good at estimating and ended up owing less than $1000. What that ended up looking like is that we got a little bit of a refund overall.

While we got a small amount back on taxes, we paid off another one of the big debts! We were REALLY excited about this, but it set us back in the bills category. With that being said, it is time to take a look at the actual breakdown for our April budget.

April Budget Breakdown

All of that being said, here is how our spending actually broke down in April:

• Auto – $1179.51
• Food/Drinks – $948.86
• Bills – $4468.36 – (This was including the taxes that I had to pay of $954.00 and a debt of $1237.00 that we paid off in full. So if we don’t include those, our monthly bills would have been $2277.46, which is close to our $2100.00 budget. The other issue was that for some reason our electric company chooses one month a year to bill us at the beginning and then again at the end, and that just happened to be this month.)
• Household – $385.14
• Luxury – $373.25
• Clothing – $91.57
• Gifts – $0
• Misc – $40.40

TOTAL SPENT: $7487.09

Grocery Store

Since we found Lidl, we feel like we have been saving more money on groceries. And while that might be the case, I am pretty darn sure that our biggest issue this month was not actual food. It was alcohol. I don’t really drink gluten free beer in the colder months, which is a good thing because it is so darn expensive. But it started to warm up this month, and with that, back in some of my gluten free beer.

As you can see, this definitely put us over our budget for April. Which we are really not happy about at all. Our action plan for May is to reign it in to one six pack every big grocery store shop for Bryan and limit myself to 6 gluten free beers every other week, or maybe less. At $3.19 per can, that is even more than we spend on a bottle of wine. So do you see how this can quickly get out of hand?

The Takeaway

We are still spending technically in the GREEN overall for the year, but  not by much. Paying off the two debts has put us close to even, but our hopes are that now that those are paid off, it will be easier for us to save more. Plus it is just nice to have those done and gone because it makes life so much easier to breathe.

We are working on changing our daily habits to be successful people; not just with our budget but in life. I will keep you posted throughout the year so you can see how we are doing and if we are able to create and keep those successful habits. Cross your fingers for us!