Friday, March 30, 2007

Tracking Every Penny - Part III

Today rounds out our Tracking Every Penny series with irregular expenses. Now in this section I had the following break down of spending.

Kid Clothes = $44.04
Kid Diapers/Wipes = $30.68
Kid Other = $12.70
DVD = $21.79
Clothes = $45.27
Medical = $37.58
Gifts = $84.18

So in summary the kid cost us $87.42 which includes enough diapers to last us about one and half months (the kid wears cloth diapers during the day). Gifts was a bit higher than normal with a high concentration of birthdays in March while medical was also abnormally high (typically it comes in as a zero for most months).

Therefore our total spending in March was $3171.30 which included $400 in furniture I would consider a rare expense, so if I take that off I'm at $2771.30 which is still a bit higher by $122 than I would have predict with my rough budget of 30-30-40.

In the end, I'm spending fairly close to what I thought I should be spending in the month and I learned a few things about my spending that I didn't know like we are going through around 8 L of milk a week (keep in mind my wife does run a daycare). Overall I would recommend this as an exercise to anyone who has never done it. It can shine a light on the world as it is, rather than what you think it is.

2 comments:

Guy said...

Hey Canadian Dream,

8L of mil a week? !!!

I have three kids (ages 10, 4 & 4) and we usually go through at least 14L of milk a week !!!

I always pick-up 5 x 2L of regular Milk and 2x 2L of Chocolate mil at my outing to Costco... and sometime we have to pick some more up at the depanneur...

Tim Stobbs said...

Guy,

I can believe 14 L a week. The daycare has only three kids age 6, 3, and 2 so the volume is a bit low. I imagine a 10 year old drinks milk like I drink coffee.

CD