Is there such a thing as a normal month? Every month we seem to have expenses that are not repeated in any other month. I guess that is why I chose the exercise of tracking our spending over a 12 month period. Hopefully, I can gain some general idea when it is averaged over the whole year.
January – $5,144.53
February – $1,783.49
March – $4,350.56
April – $2,385.31
May – $5,961.54
June – $2,939.07
July – $3,537.09
August – $3,601.19
September – $9,406.95
October – $7,490.03
More than half of our spending ($4,300 in fact) for October was on upfront payments related to our overseas trip in 2016. We have paid for over a week of accommodation as well as train and ferry fares.
On the home front, food accounted for $273, I bought 2 pairs of summer sandals which set me back $330 while the somewhat broad category of ‘House and Garden’ continues to be a bottomless pit when it comes to spending. Does anyone else find that this is the case?
This has certainly been an eye-opening exercise and when the full year is complete I will add in the regular costs such as insurances, rates and so on to get an overall figure for our spending for the year. I have a feeling that it will be fairly scary.
organised castle 
It really is a scary exercise, I don’t think I could do it – would like to just to see where the wasted money goes – teenage boys who don’t stop eating!!!
House and Garden is a never ending bottomless pit, but at least it should be adding value onto the property (we can only hope), and yes we have the same problems. Only being a one income family is a bit of a struggle so we have to sacrafice things like holidays, but I think that once my boys are older (and possible stop eating so much) things might get a bit easier.