First Foray into Personal Finance

This is going to be my first post about Personal Finance. I have been meaning to do this for quite some time actually. Why??? Well, I was never really short of money, even through my undergraduate life. The Scholarships more than made up for my tuition, leaving all the Student Loans that I got completely at my disposal -- which was a horrible idea since I was so irresponsible. By the time I graduated, I realized my total cash balance dropped to under $300 dollars -- when it was once higher than $10,000 when I was in 2nd year. To put that in perspective, I have, to date, NEVER been able to accumulate so much cash(and I've been working for three years now). Ever since that debacle, I used to keep track of my daily purchases in various places, such as my daily agenda. For the coming many years, I never really did anything with that information. Since I've recently made an effort to take hold of my financial situation, I have decided to track my spending for a month, to see exactly how much I spend on monthly/daily basis -- What I found out was quite shocking at first glance :S!

Here is a summary of all my purchases/expenses for the month of March 2009. The entries in light blue are shopping expenses. The entries in red are gas charges for my car. Along the bottom, I've summed up all my Sunday purchases, Monday purchases etc. And along the right, I've summed up all my purchases for that particular week of the month. (Btw, this doesn't include utilities and other monthly expenses -- I've kept them in another list -- these are just my daily spending lists):

March 2009 Expenses

WOW!! I spent around $2100 in one month -- and I'm just a single guy. And this doesn't even include my monthly utilies (gas, electricity, HOA Fees, Cable/Internet/Phone, and Mortgage!!!!!!). My whole family together doesn't even spend half that much! At first glance, this totally shocked me, and I finally began to realize why my credit card debts were never going down. Here's a breakdown of my expenses:

March 2009 Breakdown of Expenses:

Shopping:

I've spent a total of $218.66 on shopping this month. I've basically bought a couple of XBOX 360 games, and an XBOX 360 joystick worth around $120. I needed the joystick to have 4 controllers, so we could play some Halo 3 Multiplayer maps with 4 people. The rest of that amount was spent at a clearance sale at Sport Chalet. I think the games/joysticks were worth it. The clothes??? Probably not, since I have a huge collection of clothes anyway -- and just because there was a huge clearance sale just reinforces the fact that advertising works :P!! My goal next month is to reduce the amount of money I spend shopping!

Tax Fees:
HECK!! 260 bucks for preparing the tax return at H&R Block. That includes a $30 something charge for the 'Peace of Mind' Return where H&R block will pay all the penalties if any, and look after me in case of an IRS audit. But still, 260 bucks??? I thought they were kidding at first -- but then I came around to accepting it. I only decided to go through H&R block this year because of me being a first time home buyer. I'm definitely doing my own taxes next year, and avoiding these fees.

Gas Bill:
$175 for fuel sounds about right for me. I get around 32 to 35 miles per gallon on my Honda Civic, so I can't really complain too much about that. I'll keep an eye on this in the future.

Auto Repairs:
My radiator shaft cracked, and hence required a total replacement. Obviously this wasn't planned, contributed to my huge monthly expense bill for March 2009.

Airline:
I made a trip to good ol' Toronto near the end of March -- So that cost my $330 bucks. I had a week off work, so thats why I made the trip down. Actually, the week off work was unpaid, so not only am I not getting paid for the last week of March, I spend a further $330 bucks on a trip to Toronto!! I think its ok though: a trip to Toronto is always good for me.

Weeds:
I bought some DIY weed products. It will pay off in the long run I believe.

Food:
Another $500 for food. Actually, this one was a pleasant surprise. I eat out almost 2-3 times a day, and with rising food prices, I expected to be paying between $600 to $700 for food per month. So relatively, $500 a month is good -- but I think I can improve that figure.

Summary:

Well, I'm glad to have summarized my monthly expenses for March. At least it gave me a quantified view of where my money 'disappears' off to every month. I need to create a budget for my future months. The Auto Repair and Toronto Flight kind of made this month an expensive month. All the other expenses were on par with what I expected at the back of my head. I need to figure out what my net worth is now, and budget for my future known expenses, and try to liberate myself financially! More on this soon.....