Spending Habits: June 2019

The Breakdown

The Normal (Needs) Spending: Rent (Home), Student Loans (Education), Utilities (Bills & Utilities), Credit Card interest fees (Fees & Charges).

Spending update for June 2019: Going forward starting this month, I will no longer be paying my metro card out of pocket. Instead, it is paid out of my paycheck with pre-tax money. It no longer will factor into my spending breakdown, which is only my take-home pay.

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:

Birthday party: My love language is not gifting, but you’d never know it based on my spending this month. We had a party for Josh where a group of us went ax throwing. It was SO MUCH FUN. Definitely recommend this. Afterwards we went out to dinner. It was a large group. Everyone paid their share, but because of the way the spending calculator works, you can see that I spent A LOT on entertainment.

Birthday gift: I spent more than I anticipated on my gift for Josh, a laptop. It was totally worth it to me though because he’d done so much for our trip back in March that I felt justified in the spending. My only regret here is that I could have better prepared for this purchase.

Eating out: I went out to eat more in this month than the past few months combined. Each Friday there was an activity because of summer Fridays, grabbing lunch with co-workers, catching up with an old friend. I paid for meals on Josh’s actual birthday. I have become more conservative with my eating out. Realistically, I only budget one “brunch-like” dining per month, but this was excessive.

Final thoughts:

Unlike most months, I don’t regret spending what I did. There was a purpose to each purchase or food spend. Like in the “other category” I renewed my business plan with WordPress, or in the “Shopping” category, I spent money at Target for home essentials. I feel like I should be judging myself more harshly here, and if you saw the actual numbers, then maybe you would be, too, but really, I knew this was going to be a big spend month and I did it anyway because I was having fun. I think this month was different in that I intentionally decided to go out and be more social, whereas in past months my spending was mostly on random impulse purchases.