This is my favorite time of the month right now. I love seeing how everyone is doing, and recording my own progress, even though that’s slower than I wish it were.
I’m experimenting with new ways of reporting how the month went. I think I’ve done it slightly differently every single month 🙂 This time I tried spreadsheets, which I kind of like. The thing is, the numbers I’m getting from them don’t quite line up, probably because I used a mix of sources to get the numbers (mint.com, YNAB, my bank’s website) and I’m sure I just missed some things. Next month, maybe! This is the chart I’m pretty sure is more right:
That looks pretty good, doesn’t it? All that green! I like seeing my net worth over $6000, too. It’s climbed by $25,000 in fourteen months. If I can keep that pace up, that would be good.
This next chart, because it’s more complicated, is more likely to be off. It doesn’t tell a drastically different story than the one above, but it does explain why I’m only “eh” and not super happy about how August went:
See how, in chart #1, my credit card balances dropped by $317, while, in chart #2, I paid $596 towards debt? And how I therefore spent more than came in (although I think the exact # I came up with there is weirdly high; it should be a difference of more like $300, which is why I feel like there are errors lurking in there somewhere.)
[ETA, 09/01: AHAH! I figured it out! That $200 of “travel” savings is actually September’s travel savings. It’s already in the bank account because it’s coming out of a paycheck I received in August…but it shouldn’t be on budget. OK, that makes me feel better: the difference in my income/saving-spending for August is actually $254.48. Much more in line with the numbers in my head.]
Yeah, that would be because I over-spent my income in August. I don’t really regret any of it, even the $50 I spent eating out in Chicago, but I desperately need to have a better September (and October, November, and December) so I can knock out that debt and build up a slush fund to draw on for more expensive months.
Well, onward and upward!