I’ve got 12 months of spending categorized in excruciating detail. I haven’t really done much work on understanding the income or investment side of this goal.
2005 has been a pretty atypical year for spending (I think). Our family made it through a 1 yr remodel of an old home and moved into a house that is more than twice the size of our old house. Together that added up to a batch of spending on architect fees and home furnishings. This is also the first year we’ve had regular childcare. To me the other standout numbers were charity (suspiciously large, I think there may be an error) and both vacation & books (pathetically low). I don’t track my taxes in this list (as I’m mostly interested interested in discretionary spending, and I’m not bold enough to treat paying the man as discretionary).
I’d love to hear any insights into how this looks to you. Tracking your spending is boring, but comparing with others is interesting, especially if there is a way to get my desires more inline with my actions. I’d also love to figure out other sharable metrics for people who want to make progress on this goal. It seems like there must be a good one like debt/income, maybe rate of return on investments, and I remember from reading Your money or your life an interesting metric that shows when you’ve reduced your expenses to a level where your savings income can cover them and you are financially “free”.
Anyway, here is my spending breakdown for 2005:
13.9% Furnishings
13.4% Architect
10.1% Childcare
8.9 % Charity
8.8% Cash
7.4 % Groceries
4.2% Clothing
4.2% Dining
3.8% Gifts given
2.5% Gas & Electric
2.5% Maintenance
2.3% Home Repair
2.0% Cleaning Service
1.9% Personal Care
1.3% Fuel
0.9% Garbage, Water, Sewer
0.9% Celphone
0.8% Education
0.6% Vacation
0.6% Books
9.8% various minor categories below 0.5%
