And in my budget, I am noticing that I spent around $35,000 net this year, give or take a couple hundred.
This is not all money that has left my fingers forever, because I do count savings as an expense in my budget.
I do this because I assume that I am not spending it, and my net worth is really what shows the balance between Assets and Liabilities.
I try to keep to a personal budget of around $1000 – $1500, but the $35,000 includes my business expenses in here, as I am a freelancer.
When you look at someone’s trend of spending, you can see where they put their priorities.
I will post the specific numbers later but these are my top 5 categories of spending so far:
- Retirement Savings
- Rent
- Travel
- Groceries
- Wardrobe (Heh heh.)
Mine don’t seem so out of place, and I have a wardrobe ban on myself until December 2010.
More as a challenge than anything else, really.
Travel was high but we did a lot of traveling on the cheap this year, including going to Portugal for 3 weeks, and I traveled quite a bit for work as well.
Can’t wait to look at my year-end numbers for 2010.
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year.
Now I am self-employed, and you can read more about 
Is your budget $1500-2000 per month?! Living in Chicago that is absolutely impossible. My rent is almost $1300 alone for a TINY “1 bedroom” apartment. What advice to you have for girls living in a big city in which living cheap is not an option?
Yes, it’s $1500 – $2000 a month, but I spend around $1500… it says $2000 on average but I count travel as one-offs.. I don’t do it as a regular monthly thing.
Trips were just so cheap this year.
If living cheap is not an option, then cutting back on expenses is your only way. Cooking at home, buying while on discount/sales… re-using, reducing and then recycling what you have.
No clothes until NEXT December? How is that possible?
I have tons of clothes. I’ll be 100000% fine LOL 🙂
It’ll just be hard to keep from buying anything.
I budget about $30,000 for everything plus $12000 for travel and $12000 for Roth IRA. That's all after taxes and other retirement savings. Two adults, two kids in college (on large scholarships). WE have aging family on each coast. Plus we budget for a Europe trip, though we sometimes don't spend that money.
I don’t really budget for travel each year, but now with BF, it’s around $5000 – $7000 / year.. only because I have the room for it in my budget without spending it in other areas
My top expenses (by percentage of netpay)
OSAP repayment – 29%
Family Rent – 20%
Gifts/Celebration – 6%
Yeah, my expenses looked like that when I had debt. I was paying back 20% – 50% of my pay just to get rid of those student loans
You are so close!! 🙂
My top categories are Retirement 30%, Rent, Lunch/eating out, Motorcycles, Then kinda a tossup between Travel, Girlfriend, and Entertainment to round out the top 5.
Scary to think about how much I spend on food LOL sometimes more than rent for the month. Its hard not to go out when you work within walking distance of 40-50 fabulous restaurants, many of them with 4 or 5 star ratings. I only go to those if the Boss is paying 😉
I go through phases of cooking a lot and brownbagging it for a month then go back to dining out 3-4 times a week. I love cooking but its hard to cook for 1 or 2 so I end up putting on the pounds cooking for myself with lots of awesome food in the house and slim back down when eating out.
lol! “Motorcycles”
That’s interesting that you put on weight cooking for yourself and then slim down when you eat out
For me, it’s the opposite…
I just like cooking at home with all of this free time, and I like eating the same thing over and over again. That sort of thing bothers people but I am someone who cooks once and eats the rest of the week.
For me its like I'll take home lots of leftover turkey from Thanksgiving and make 2 9×9 pans of rolled turkey enchiladas. So its enchiladas for breakfast, enchiladas for lunch, more for dinner, some for a late night snack before bed etc LOL
I dont know what it is but most of these places in Santa Fe serve enormous platter sized portions, so to even come close to finishing your ginormous lunch you really cant eat anything else for the entire day. Throw in a nice micro-brew with it and you feel like taking a nap the rest of the afternoon.
So when eating out I'll just eat one big lunch a day, sometimes with just a light breakfast the next day and thats it for those two days with water and tea to tide me over. Vs cooking and eating 4-5 smaller meals a day and probably more overall 😉
When I look at my over all yearly expenses through my Quickbooks reports, most of my money (25%) goes towards rent. Then business expenses (my husband owns his own business), then utilities. This is where most of our money goes. Man, that yurt I came across is sounding more and more like a good idea!