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Spending Percentages

October 29th, 2015 at 04:52 pm

I track our budget v. actual monthly, but it's not really that accurate, since some expenses are annual expenses (and in the case of our every-other-year trip to the UK, biennial expenses; let's not even go there).

So I look at my budget v. actual annual to get a better look at how we're doing.

But that's not even very accurate since extra money comes in, and it gets put into savings or pays down some on the mortgage, or goes towards a trip (since travel is where we like to spend found money if we're not saving it).

Spending percentages are a really good way of looking at how we're spending. I do the numbers as percentage of total spending rather than percentage of earnings.

Our goal is:
needs - 50%
wants - 30%
savings - 20%

Our actual for the past year is:
needs - 45% (medical/dental and household repairs categories were higher than budgeted, but we kept our personal and food categories lower than budgeted)
wants -27% (pretty much right on budget except we paid for our UK trip this year; this would have been even lower otherwise)
savings - 27% (due to putting most of our extra money into savings!)

I have percentages for different categories, too, but this gives a good overall picture.

In other good news: F's parent teacher conference/report card!
- ELA (English Language Arts): A
- Social Studies: A
- Math (and she's in the challenge math group!!): A

The only negative is that her work is super messy so it's hard to see sometimes that she got the right answer; they're working with her on this, and the teacher gave me a suggestion to try at home.

3 Responses to “Spending Percentages”

  1. laura/deacon's wife Says:
    1446156409


    Sounds good all the way round. I am the parent of a dysgraphic/dyslexic - oh the challenges that presents! Grades are great though. Smile

  2. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    1446159904

    Good job F!

  3. rob62521 Says:
    1446229616

    Good job, F! (And mom!)

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