money.
in 2008 I successfully set up quickbooks for the farm so that we could close tabs on our income and expenses. at the same time, I wanted a clearer picture of our personal spending habits so I also set up a quickbooks file for our personal expenses. I kept track of every single receipt and itemized them all into different budget categories. now that the year is over casey and I can see how we REALLY spent our money in 2008. it's interesting.
cat related: $413.41 (food, shots)
clothing: $685.57 (mostly work clothes since we go through those quickly)
entertainment: $45.10 (ha!)
food: $5041.20 (food stuffs: $4462.69, eating out: $578.51)
health costs: $2237.20 ($1820 for insurance)
household incidentals: $560.51 (new oven, etc.)
life insurance: $381.25
mortgage: $9367.71
reading materials: $376.05 (books, newspaper subs)
personal incidentals (shampoo, etc): $310.44
property taxes: $563.80
electricity: $499.70
garbage: $180.12
cell phones: $1454.55 (ack!)
total exenses (including a few other categories left out here to keep it simple): $23,092.56
left out of THAT number: our honda civic expenses ($1783.06) and federal and state taxes ($5296), both of which I keep track of on our business account. with those included, our expenses were: $30,171.62.
I was pretty surprised at our food spending: about one-fifth of our total. and that's with us eating lots and lots of "free" veggies!!!!! apparently eating well is a high priority for us and "entertainment" is not.
we're overall pleased with what we learned. our projected 2009 budget more or less reflects the same numbers except with an increased health budget to account for a potential birth. the cell phone cost kills me, but I'm not sure how to get out of that one. we should give away and save more too, but we were on thin margin this year. no debt tho!
but we're happy to see that we could easily survive on two minimum wage jobs (about $17k/yr each). as farmers we made about $6.50/hr ea.
anybody else keeping close tabs on spending during these tight financial times?
cat related: $413.41 (food, shots)
clothing: $685.57 (mostly work clothes since we go through those quickly)
entertainment: $45.10 (ha!)
food: $5041.20 (food stuffs: $4462.69, eating out: $578.51)
health costs: $2237.20 ($1820 for insurance)
household incidentals: $560.51 (new oven, etc.)
life insurance: $381.25
mortgage: $9367.71
reading materials: $376.05 (books, newspaper subs)
personal incidentals (shampoo, etc): $310.44
property taxes: $563.80
electricity: $499.70
garbage: $180.12
cell phones: $1454.55 (ack!)
total exenses (including a few other categories left out here to keep it simple): $23,092.56
left out of THAT number: our honda civic expenses ($1783.06) and federal and state taxes ($5296), both of which I keep track of on our business account. with those included, our expenses were: $30,171.62.
I was pretty surprised at our food spending: about one-fifth of our total. and that's with us eating lots and lots of "free" veggies!!!!! apparently eating well is a high priority for us and "entertainment" is not.
we're overall pleased with what we learned. our projected 2009 budget more or less reflects the same numbers except with an increased health budget to account for a potential birth. the cell phone cost kills me, but I'm not sure how to get out of that one. we should give away and save more too, but we were on thin margin this year. no debt tho!
but we're happy to see that we could easily survive on two minimum wage jobs (about $17k/yr each). as farmers we made about $6.50/hr ea.
anybody else keeping close tabs on spending during these tight financial times?