Wednesday, May 03, 2006

1st Trimester Wrap-Up

Hey, that's the nice thing about having 12 months in the year--when you forget to do a quarterly recap, you can always pretend you planned to look at the year in thirds instead.

My net worth at the end of April was $289,459, up $4935 from the previous month, and up $33,119 from the end of last year.
For April, I was about $105 over budget on food, due to a couple of splurgy dinners out. I was also a little over on telephone, and Entertainment/Books, but most other categories were in good shape last month and my overall expenses were actually about $413 under budget.
For Jan-April, my expenses are over budget by $3428, but that is entirely due to the extra taxes paid on my bonus. If you factor out taxes, I am under budget by $1281.

Here's a few details:
Income:
My income for Jan-April looks way out of whack at $52395, over budget by $16562! I wish that were accurate, but it's a bit skewed by some realized gains from sales and exchanges of funds in my brokerage account and 401k. Also, I realized I haven't budgeted in an amount for my employer's matching contributions to my 401k. The only thing that was a real unexpected windfall was my bonus, which was about $1500 higher than I'd expected. I don't really think about hitting a budget with my income anyway-- it's all just salary and predictable things.

Expenses:
Categories under budget are
Travel -$984, since I have yet to take any sort of vacation.
Clothing -$781, since everything I see in stores lately is either turd brown, or cut like a maternity top, or both.
Education -$181, since I haven't taken any other classes besides French this year.
Gifts Given -$143, which is normal since I'll catch up on gift-giving later in the year.
Telephone -$55, for no particular reason other than trying to cut back a bit

Categories over budget are
Dining +$26.14, which isn't bad, really.
Entertainment +$101.45, due to one expensive show, so hopefully this will balance out by year's end
Household is +$208, because budget says zero. I must have forgotten to put a number in! $50 a month seems a bit high.
Miscellaneous +$213. I think this will balance out by year's end, since my tax prep fee hit here as a one-time thing.
Subscriptions +$53, due partially to one-time DSL installation fee.

Overall, I think I am still on track for my goals for the rest of the year, but I can't help being nervous about the cash flow leading up to and beyond the condo closing. The closer it gets, the less opportunity I have to stash away cash! But I've been doing some cash flow analysis in Excel to reassure myself... I'll post about it soon.

3 comments:

DINKs said...

Hi Madame X,

Just came across your blog. Congrats on your net worth, I think its far higher than the national average for someone in your age bracket.

I've enjoyed reading your page and will check back again soon!

Peachy said...

I agree on the clothes. Nothing good. Today I read an article on the long shorts not being acceptable for work...well duh. There's still hope for summer(crossing my fingers)

Dwight said...

Heh...trimester means something completely different to those expecting! From the title I expected to see that I had missed an important post sometime in the past three months...