January thru May Expenses

Last time, I posted January thru April, and I kept in finance charges and interest expense. While they are true expenses, including them can be misleading if one just looks at my total expenses, total debt and income. It does appear that there is no way that everything could be paid without going more into debt. When in fact, the finance charge and interest expense is included with my monthly debt payments.

If anyone has any suggestions on what they would like to see, please let me know and I will see what I can do.



The biggest expenses that I would like to see dwindle down are for groceries and dining. With my husband switching shifts, we ended up dining more than we should have adjusting to the change.

A huge problem with groceries are the little visits to the store. We had two major shopping trips at Walmart and then about 10 visits to the local grocery store. It is amazing how those little visits added up to $200 in no time. It's hard, but I believe that trying to limit shopping trips to once a week will work wonders with our grocery expense. That means creating some lists and sticking to them.

Right now, on a yearly basis our expenses are running $17,800/year. For an income of $40,000/year that leaves over $22,000/year for other things. Just imagine if that money could be put in savings instead of going towards debt. Wow.