Living with less, financial edition: September recap

The guy I married said it's okay to post our household expenses from now on. So here you go!

This includes everything except our mortgage, health insurance, annual charity donations and retirement savings. We don't have much control over much of that and I always donate a specific percentage of my salary to charity, so that's not changing either. No point in posting them.

This month's expenses are a far cry from where we'd like to be, which is under $2000 a month. We topped out at

Me: $1,082.11 

The guy I married: $35.18

Shared things and activities: $1551.84

Total: $2669.13.

I did add my own student loan payment and my church tithe into my expenses on top of what I kept track of on the blog.

The worrisome thing is that this is a month where we consciously kept an eye on our spending. It's still a heck of a lot. While we don't have credit card debt, what we don't have anymore is savings. They all went into the condo purchase. That's why you'll see the emergency fund thermometer on the right.

Next month we'll be working on trimming our expenses down to $2500. We plan to do this by decreasing our grocery expenditure and our transportation expenditure. We have a lot of food in the freezer and pantry and can use that. 

I'll be working on my own expenses, which were far better this month than the last two months. I plan to try spending less than $50 on clothes this month, keeping my eating out to less than $40, not buying Christmas presents this month, and using the cheaper dry cleaner this month.

Do you have specific categories you plan to cut down on this month?