Day 15) Halfway Through Where’s My Money Going Month

Welcome to Day 15 of Where’s My Money Going? Month! This February 2009, I’m challenging readers (and myself) to track spending manually for 28 days. Don’t worry if you’re late to the party, you’re still welcome to join. Consider tracking your spending into March.

Well, it’s just over halfway into the month. So today I’m doing a modified spending report on the week/month.

Last week, I was concerned about groceries, but now we’re halfway through the month and less than halfway through our spending budget. We’re also doing far better on gas than I’d anticipated. Should I let myself get used to lower prices or would it be better to plan for more and spend less?

The big thing this week has been medical expenses. I’d budgeted for our regular prescriptions, but there were a few surprises. First, we just changed to a new insurance company and haven’t yet met our deductible. I was expecting the pre-deductible cost to be the same as it was on the last insurance. But it cost $5 more. No biggie.

Then Micah had to get a prescription renewed. Our doctor moved to India (unanticipated) so he couldn’t call in about it, he had to see a new doctor. $25 copay. Then a bill that our previous insurance didn’t cover came in the mail. We double-checked, but it actually makes sense that it wasn’t covered because it was pre-deductible. $57.

Normally we have no extra medical expenses, so I’m not sure the best way to handle this. We could start putting a little aside each month as a medical fund, or I could just budget money that would otherwise go into savings. The first appeals to me a bit more. We could set a cap and simply stop contributing when it reached that…then start again when we had to withdraw money. We’re going to think this over.

How about you? How have your first two weeks gone?

This post was part of Where’s My Money Going? Month. Tomorrow is a guest post by a reader who explains his simple, non-techy money-tracking method and what he’s learned from it.

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