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April was our stay-at-home month. We tried to isolate and minimize all social aspects. We did all our shopping online (including groceries), minimized all our outdoor activities, and paused daycare. As a result, we stayed healthy and we managed to reduce our expenses down to less than $6k.
Observations
- Our total expenses were down to $5.8k!
- Most of the drop is due to limited daycare expenses ($250 instead of $1660) and reduced shopping
- Our groceries expenses are still above $1k
- We used Instacart for all our shopping, which added to the cost, as all items were priced higher
- We had some one-time expenses, captured as “Education” and “Other” that totaled almost $400
Detailed breakdown
| Category | Expenses | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Mortgage | $2,658 | This is a 15-year mortgage @3% |
| Groceries | $1,146 | We got everything from Costco, PCC, Kroger via Instacart. Unfortunately, this means that we paid higher prices than if we had bought them directly from the store |
| Shopping | $801 | Amazon 100% |
| Utilities | $351 | Electricity (80%), Internet, Garbage, Alarm |
| Daycare | $250 | We were very fortunate that our daycare gave us the option to keep our children at home and keep their spots by paying this one-time fee (instead of charging their regular monthly fee) |
| Other | $199 | This includes tolls and fees |
| Education | $190 | Educational expenses for me to learn how to grow this account |
| Car/Gas | $185 | Car Licensing fees (90%), Costco gas |
| Cell phone | $72 |
How to easily track your monthly expenses
This is the methodology that I use to monitor my monthly expenses. You can also do the same:
- Create a free online account at Personal Capital
- Link your accounts, so that you can track them in the Personal Capital dashboard
- Bank accounts
- Retirement accounts (401k, IRA, etc)
- Credit cards
- Investment accounts
- At the end of each month, view the list of your Expenses (also found if you go to Banking -> Cash Flow -> Expense)
- Go through each line one by one
- Check if the “Category” of the expense is correct. If not, then move it to the correct category. You can also create your own categories
- When you are done, you can view the graphs with the aggregate data and compare your expenses with last month
Any suggestions?
