One Month Challenge, Day 27
This month, Zen Habits is taking up the One Month Challenge and I will be tracking all of my expenses and logging them throughout the month of February.
Day 27 of my One Month Challenge has passed. Here's how it turned out:
- Item: Gas; Cost: $40.00; Essential? Yes
- Item: Dining out; Cost: $24.00; Essential? No
- Item: Groceries; Cost: $302.70; Essential? Yes
I have a feeling that eating out expenses will be higher than I expected. One day left on my challenge -- I've done better than I expected.
2 comments:
I have found it interesting to follow this thread. One thing I would like to mention, though. You list "groceries" as 100% essential. I know my grocery shopping is rarely 100% essential. For example, most weeks, my husband insists on spending $13.00 on a cake from the bakery. Even if we spend $130.00 in a trip (usually it's about half that) and buy nothing else that isn't essential (rare), our grocery shopping is only 90% essential. Still, even if closer scrutiny reduced the percentage to 80%, that isn't bad at all.
Hi Mountaineer ... thanks for the comment. You make an excellent point, and you are absolutely right. I'm pretty good at sticking to my grocery list, but in truth, there are always a couple items that are non-essential. I'd say about 90% of my groceries are essential, but it would be interesting to do an actual analysis.
The reason I didn't break down my expenditures to that level of detail was because it would have been too difficult. It was a challenge enough for me to track my expenses every day for a month (I had failed in all previous attempts), so if I had added that extra level of difficulty, the attempt might have failed. I think the exercise was useful even if it wasn't 100 percent accurate.
Thanks, though, for pointing that out. It's definitely something to think about.
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