Tuesday, January 03, 2006

December spending

Despite Christmas gift-giving, I didn't really break the bank in December. It hardly seems possible, and I can't say my waistline shows it, but Quicken swears that I only spent $300.04 on food in December! I was away from home for parts of the month, and was trying not to buy lunch much, but I'm still shocked that the number is that low.
I only spent $559 on gifts. I might have bought a couple of small things in November, but I also just tried not to spend too much and I cut back on the number of people to whom I gave gifts. And of course I gave a few people books that I got for free. Shh!
Entertainment was $109.63-- a movie, a couple of DVD rentals, and my binge on CDs. (I didn't end up making those mix CDs as gifts afterall!)
Household was $49.61-- laundry, and some cleaning supplies
Miscellaneous: $80 on a haircut and $36.83 on a few months' worth of styling products for my elegant coiffure. Also a couple dollars worth of stamps to send postcards from Mexico.
Travel: $190 worth of Amtrak tickets, $16 worth of Long Island Railroad tickets bought at special transit strike fare (and which went unused since the strike ended), $36 worth of taxis ($10 of that was due to the strike), $3.00 toll while in car with my mom, and $1.25 for a T token in Boston.
Telephone: $144 (my cellphone bill was high at $76.36, but I'll get reimbursed for about $30 from my job), then $42.39 long-distance, and $25.22 for my local service. I'm going to start paying more attention to the phone costs so I'll be ready to decide if I want to go for VOIP!
That is all I spent, aside from the fixed monthly expenses of rent, insurance, newspaper sub, French lessons, AOL, etc. Now I have to look back and see how I did on all my yearly budgets, and work out my 2006 spending budgets... should be fun!

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