Frugal 2018// Quarter 2

Eh, this wasn't the most frugal quarter of the year...You can view the Quarter 1 report here. 

Auto & Transport: Our spending is down 30% compared to the second quarter of 2017.  That is entirely due to the final car payment that we made in 2017. Which means we've been car payment-free for over a year, and man, I never want to budget for that again.  Our Mazda 3 is over 10 years old though, so I keep prompting Francisco to take care of it better to extend its life as long as possible.

Bills & Utilities: Pretty close - we're talking a difference of $8.00.

Entertainment: This says we're down 86%, but that's just because we had dumped our visit to The Rook expense into this category last year. I know for a fact we just dumped this into Restuarants this year. Otherwise, the only expense in this category this year is from when Francisco went to see the latest Star Wars movie with his friends. 

Fees & Charges: Yuck, we were hit with an overdraft fee last year. No banking mistakes yet this year!

Food & Dining: Our spending is up by 8% this year.  I guess we've been getting a little more relaxed with our restaurant spending this year. I think I've seen a trend that as the temperatures warm up, we tend to go out to eat more. Let's face it, it's easier to stay inside in the winter.

Gifts & Donations: We have had NO spending on gifts this year. Which is kind of crazy. Francisco did end up buying me a birthday present, but I asked him to return it because it really doesn't fit in our spending plan. For his birthday, we are thinking of going caving in Kentucky later this month. I am a much bigger fan of having fun, memorable experiences on birthdays, rather than exchanging things.

Health & Fitness: This year, I've been tracking what we actually pay for health insurance and recording this information as we receive our paychecks. Usually, this is something we don't pay much attention to since it is auto-deducted.  If we ignore that sub-account, we've only spent $0.74 this year and that was all in HSA fees vs around $60 last year and that was almost entirely for Francisco's allergy medicine.  The HSA fees are what my HSA provider charges to invest a portion of my funds. I wrote down a name of a different company that I'm going to look into that is supposed to allow investing with no fees.

Home: Our rent cost is the same, but our spending is down by $40.00 because we switched renter's insurance companies from State Farm to Jetty Insurance.

Pets: Big sigh. Our spending is up by 1,823%. Sometimes pets get sick, and that can come with a large financial cost. Zharo ended up with an abscess on his cheek at the beginning of June, and he ended up having to get a tooth extracted. This wasn't something we budgeted for specifically, but these things are impossible to plan for. The pet care costs aren't over yet as he got sick again this month.

Shopping: Shoot, I was hoping for a more positive trend in this category, but...our spending is up by 269%. We had to get a new laptop this year because our old one stopped holding a charge.  It turned into quite the computer saga lol.  And I also got a new cell phone!

Travel: This is a category I am very interested to watch this year.  So far, we've spent 89% less this year.  In the second quarter of 2017, we paid for our flights to Iceland and Paris and paid for our Paris airbnb. This year, we have already paid for our flights for our 2018 destination, but you can see that the cost was MUCH less. Spending will pick up in this category as we have many hotels and a rental car to book soon. But I am hoping for a very frugal trip! Well, sort of. It is kind of our 10-year anniversary destination, so we should maybe splurge a little...

Summary: We've spent 8% more this year than we spent in 2017. Considering the unplanned expenses of having to replace our laptop and taking Zharo to the vet for surgery, I guess this isn't TOO bad.

YTD, we are down 9%. But  if you adjust for the car payment we had last year, we have spent more this year vs. last.

Side note: I am tracking 401K contributions and Taxes as well, but these are not currently in any of the numbers here.