Hello! I’ve done a few of these posts already for January and February. I kind of purposely skipped March since so much of that spending was related to travel and I have a couple of posts in the pipeline about that specifically. So I’m jumping into this monthly recap knowing that I’m coming off a major vacation spend. How did I do?
The Breakdown
The Normal (Needs) Spending: Rent (Home), Student Loans (Education), Utilities (Bills & Utilities), Credit Card interest fees (Fees & Charges), and my monthly subway pass (Auto & Transport).
Also, I noticed that this spending calculator doesn’t account for “transfers” from one account to another, as in, it doesn’t calculate my monthly contribution to savings, or my credit card payment, or any money that goes into my Acorns account. Rest assured, these transactions are happening!
Unusual (Wants) Spending:
Shopping: skincare and beauty at Sephora, Deciem, and (surprisingly) Marshall’s; t-shirts for myself (Uniqlo); a dress for a themed birthday party (Unique Vintage); buying a mattress pad and air filter online (Amazon).
Food: Brunch with a friend at the beginning of the month; then later in the month, brunch at home, which was supposed to save money, but we ended up buying a lot of supplies; two orders of Seamless; a happy hour with coworkers; a few instances where I bought lunch at Pret or Smorgasburg near my office.
On the plus side, a lot of the grocery shopping was done by my fiancé(!) so that doesn’t show up on my transactions.
Phone Bill (Bills & Utilities): The overseas data charges from last month were charged this month. It was an extra $100 on top of the normal bill.
New Savings Account (Financial): Opened a joint savings account with my fiancé to start saving for our wedding.
Entertainment: My friend’s karaoke birthday party; seeing a Disney cover band; movie theater food
Gym membership (Health & Fitness): The yearly membership fee was charged in April, plus the monthly fee.
Other: Manicure; paid an amended tax return (definitely not a “want,” but still unusual spending); Facebook birthday fundraiser for a friend; my yearly domain renewal.
WOW @ myself
I honestly didn’t think that I was spending that much, but when I see it all laid out, it’s kind of hard to avoid. What I do want to note here is that I received a bit of extra income for an overtime project at work. I don’t think I would have spent as much if I just received my normal paycheck. Also worth mentioning that I made an extra large credit card payment with that overtime money so it wasn’t all spend, spend, spend.
My goal for May is to have a couple of “no spend” weekends or try to find things to do that don’t involve shopping or spending extra now that I have a major savings goal I need to be working toward.
Spending Habits [last month]
Heather Allen 
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