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November Recap, and looking ahead

December 2nd, 2014 at 05:06 pm

I'm consistently blown away by how fast time is moving these days... ah well.

I sat down this morning to pay my bills and go over spending for last month to see just how bad it was. haha. I went ahead and purchased my new camera last week, so that put me $1,800 deeper than I expected to be for the month, but it was going to be purchased sooner or later, and with two weddings in the next week that are super low-light, I felt sooner was better. So my business spending was way above and beyond what I had budgeted. Thankfully, I've got that Amazon rewards card - so I now have $58 of credit. There was also a $300 rebate. I'm mailing in the stuff for that today. I also have an excess of one camera now that my backup has been replaced by my former main camera. So I'm hoping to get $500 out of that. Let's hope!

Other places I went over budget in November:

- Groceries
- Restaurants

I think some of the items accounted for in my "grocery" budget weren't all actual food. Target pops up a few times, which is most certainly a mix of food and crap I don't need. Oh, Target... Actually, $50 of that was the Christmas tree we picked up at Target. Mystery solved... haha.

I only budget $30 for restaurants a month. I really need to rethink that. Because I never ever actually stay within that. But honestly, we've been really good about cooking this month. So I'm surprised to see it over $150. Part of that was the lunch I had with my brother ($30), one stop at the burger place that BF and I always hit when we travel down to my hometown ($21). The rest of it is just little things here and there - a coffee, a tea, an icecream, a stop at Arby's after the wedding I shot (they didn't really feed me). Just goes to show that it all adds up.

***

As for this month... I crunched the numbers and made sure I'm going to be good for making my goals. It's going to be a rough one. It's a fairly slow month considering. But I'm hoping to book one or two weddings by the end of it, which would help considerably.

I also have to make sure I don't go crazy with the xmas spending. I've already got a few people crossed off my list. Trying to keep it as simple as humanly possible. Really, it's just BF and my mom that will be larger gifts. And as usual, I'm struggling to figure out things to get both of them. I'll be designing a retro-style soccer poster for BF. That's going to be his big gift, I think. And then some smaller fun things. Mom I've got no clue. Nonetheless, I'm *hoping* to keep my total spending under $300 for remaining gifts. We'll see how that goes. That $58 in Amazon rewards credit + the $25 Amazon gift card I purchased with PNC points should help.

***

Goal Update:

- Transferred $525 to my savings account for taxes, bringing the total up to $3,141.03.
- Transferred $219 to my Ally account for travel savings, bringing the total up to $546.

I'll by paying additional on my Sallie Mae loan once I get a couple more payments from clients. Don't want that account to get too low!

That's about it for my update. Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

2 Responses to “November Recap, and looking ahead”

  1. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    1417737985

    Controlling my eating out budget is something I was having a hard time with having moved to an area with lots of temptation. So I went on a 60 day no eating out challenge. I managed to do it too (with two well thought out exceptions). In the three weeks since, I have stopped for take out one time.

  2. pjmama Says:
    1418240335

    Nice! That's some serious willpower! Very inspiring Smile

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