I can’t believe July is already over! I feel like it should still be spring, not time for back-to-school shopping. It blows my mind. You know what else blows my mind? All the money I spent this month. I will admit, I didn’t keep track as closely as I should have and it totally shows.

Here’s the breakdown of where my money went in July:

Fixed Expenses

These are the easy ones. My car payment, car insurance, AT&T bill,cable/internet, and CC payments fall into this category. I budgeted $750, but since I paid off my last CC (HOORAY!) and the CC charges from last month, I actually spent $1250.

Groceries/Household

Budget was $250. I spent $275.40. I have no good reason why this happened - I just bought whatever and didn’t pay attention. Fail!

Gas

Gas is currently $3.83/gal. in my area. I budgeted $250 and somehow only spent $202.50. I must have paid for gas with cash or something, because I have driven more this month than I have all year! This is definitely not accurate, but it’s what my bank is showing.

Roth/Savings

I contributed $200 to my Roth this month and $228 toward savings.

Utilities

Budget was $150. I spent $157. Now that my electric bill is on the levelized plan, I guess I need to change this to $160.

Restaurants

Budget was $150. I spent $223. This is ridiculous! Why can’t I stop don’t I stop doing this every month? Frustrated. You know, I don’t know how I can spend so much at the grocery store and still spend this much eating out.

Cigarettes

Budget was $100. I spent $75. This includes some Cigotine refill cartridges, but I still haven’t completely stopped smoking the real cigarettes. Working on this.

Miscellaneous

Much like last month, July was kind of a disaster. At least I didn’t use credit cards this time! Still, I kind of bought what I wanted without thinking about my budget. Keep in mind, my budget for this category is supposed to be $100 per month.

• $56 for my Depo Provera injection, which is not covered by my new insurance plan. Dammit. That will come up every three months.
• $60.61 for clothing.
• $10.59 for a Kindle book.
• $44.93 for business card design and stock photos for the site.
• $24.72 for business cards (thankful for coupon codes, or this would have been way higher).
• $65.11 for accessories for my home office, which is finally functional after 20 months of my desk sitting in the basement waiting to be refinished.
• $200 for a desk chair - my old one got ruined because it was in the basement for so long. We’re talking fuzzy mildew stuff that looked like it might kill me in my sleep.

So I spent $461.96, or $361.96 more than I was supposed to. FAIL!

Overall, July looks like this: I had a budget of $2150, income of $3102.87 (primary job + second job + ad income), and I spent or saved $3072.86. That leaves $30.01 in my checking account. At least I ended in the black, I guess.

August will be an interesting month - my first paycheck should be normal plus 60 hours of vacation time. The second check will absolutely SUCK because I’ll only have 1 week of billing (and part of that is the first few days of school, when I won’t be able to pull kids out of class for therapy unless they have an emergency). I’m prepared, but it’s going to hurt to see that dip in my e-fund. However, my restaurant and gas spending should go WAY down to balance things out a little. We’ll see how it goes!