January Expenses Tracking Update

Hi everyone, I posted at the beginning of the month and shared that I would be logging all of my expenses this month. Today being the last of January, I wanted to give an update.

Now, to start off, I SUCK at budgeting. I have PTSD and as most of us, have felt extremely lonely these past two years, and have undergone extreme changes in my life throughout the pandemic (graduated college, bought my first car, officially moved out of my parents, etc). My spending habits 1000% reflect the uncertainty, loneliness, and overall confusion about what I’m doing with my life.

This is blatant now as I look at my expenses for the month. I am going to be very honest, so please do not judge me or bring negativity. I grew up a poor immigrant so this is my first time in the real world with my own money.

I have no dependents and have no experience budgeting. In order to start in a way that felt natural for me, I split my spending into the following categories, based off of what I use my money on the most:

1. Bills: rent, car payments, credit card payment, utilities, as gas, medical bills, and I included laundry related expenses here too.
2. Food: self explanatory. Groceries & take out.
3. Savings
4. Fun: shopping, bars, vices
5. Miscellaneous: parking, beauty & wellness supplies

I am shocked!! To see how much I spend. I would like to get to a point where I spend no more than $500 monthly on food, fun, and miscellaneous items. Currently I am spending almost an entire two weeks worth of work in these three categories.

After logging all of my daily expenses, I wrote about all of my “Fun” transactions and whether the experiences had been worth the cost. I wanna say out of 12 transactions I could only justify 4 or so of them. The others I did because the night is young, I thought.

I am a bit worried about the coming month because my birthday is coming up and I am basically booked every weekend with dinners and have a trip coming up. I am grateful of course, but nervous about overspending.