I tracked my spending, and .... yikes.

I decided to track our family spending from August 21- Sept. 20 and see if I was sticking to the strict budget we have.  As a family of 5 on ONE teacher's salary-- it's pretty strict.

Now, I may have picked a crappy month to track because of all the back-to-school costs-- but it seems every month there are unexpected things, so no time is perfect.

So--- I'm just gonna get real with numbers now-- it'll be quaint for our kids to read this in 30 years and se the actual dollars we were working with.  

Mortgage and bills right away add up to 1,744.57-- this includes health insurance, car insurance, life insurance, electric bill, internet, etc.  All the bills.

The one area we did better in is gas-- our budget is $250.  Since we moved closer to the places we go daily, we've cut our gas by almost half-- just by moving 7 miles closer.  Total gas for the month for both cars was $125.82.  Yay!

Groceries-- fail.  My budget is $500, and we spent $778.87.  I did stock up on some sale stuff for back to school (um... 76 boxes of Z-bars at $1.25 a box.... yes, I did.)  Still... that's $278 over budget!

"Other"... our budget for this is $250 and ideally $100 would go to savings every month, so it'd really be $150.  That's $150 for everything-- Target, treats, babysitter, any eating out, toiletries, Post Office--whatever.  This month it included $157 for two brand new tires, Target back to school supplies and stock-up of TP, paper towels, etc., a couple times of major pool shock because of algae, a bike seat for my 1 yr old so I could get back to exercising, $66 in Girl Scout registration and uniform-- and then basically a lot more Target trips, tiny treats here and there at Panera, Whole Foods, Dunkin, etc.
Too much-- way too much.  But, for argument's sake-- I did want to really track everything, so I didn't try to spend more frugally.  Total was $893.48.  Huge fail.  Huge.

So, all in all, this month we spent $798.17 that we didn't have.  That is CRAZY.

It's a little depressing, but I'm giving myself credit for tracking it and being mindful going forward.

I'll spend the next month really working on ways to do even more with less.  I do all the stuff people know-- coupon, sales, not going out,  I cut all 5 family members' hair, we don't have Smart Phones, we have iPad minis and we just use WiFi wherever we go, no cable, just Netflix and Hulu, one day a week we don't drive anywhere to save gas,  etc. I have found even little stuff like putting things on my Amazon wish list helps.  I know it's there-- I know I won't forget about it and meanwhile I know it's there for me when I'm ready to buy it.