Welcome to Day 28 of Where’s My Money Going? Month! This February 2009, I’m challenging readers (and myself) to track spending manually for 28 days. Sure, the month is over but if you’d like to join then why not do it through March?
This is the last day of February and therefore the last day of “Where’s My Money Going?” Month on this blog. We came in $250 under budget! That’s a $250 snowflake to go along with the money we’d budgeted toward Micah’s student loans ($750). That doesn’t count the extra money I earned through blogging/consulting, which I haven’t fully tallied yet.
Win.
Because of the way I tracked and budgeted, I was able to get that info right away instead of waiting a while, fiddling with numbers, etc. That feels really good. That in itself is a great motivator to keep this up.
I’m going to take about half an hour today to look at the budget outline I used last time, look at the notes I’ve taken about spending habits and goals, and write a budget for the next month. Then all I have to do is use my handy YNAB register to enter purchases and voila. Speaking of that, today is the last day to enter the You Need a Budget giveaway.
This March, I’m going back to general personal finance topics. I have to say that budgeting and financial tracking have a fonder spot in my heart now than they did before. I half expected to be thoroughly tired of them by now, but I’m not. There’s another win. (I am kind of tired of using both my spreadsheets and YNAB and am looking forward to only using one!)
Thanks to everyone who participated, whether they were active in the comments or played along quietly but faithfully at home. Thanks to the people who wrote guests posts and those who contributed to some great discussions. This month was a lot of fun for me, very encouraging and taught me a great deal about my financial habits…including some stuff I’d rather not have known but that I can learn from.
This was the final post of Where’s My Money Going? Month.
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I have just read threw all of your posts for this month and found it very informative.
It has inspired me to pay closer attention to my own spending in March.
Thanks 🙂
Thank you for leading this charge! It was indeed an interesting experience.
I’ll probably keep it up as exact for March, since February was so crazy for us. It didn’t really indicate our ‘normal’ spending.
This was great!
Congratulations; it looks like you gained a new interest in budgeting, which is always good. I’ll have to do this myself, and tomorrow is as good a time to start as any.
I’m one of those who played along quietly. Thanks for doing this! I wouldn’t have tracked my expenses otherwise.
Now that I have this info, I’m trying to figure out how I should budget around it. I put together something at the beginning of the year, but it was just to make sure my expenses < income. I need to think about what to do with the $ leftover…
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