p It took me a little while to get all of the information to complete March #8217;s income and expense report. I was able to find all of the receipts I needed, but I couldn #8217;t find the last paystub my husband received for his temporary job. The net effect is basically the same because the income in my report is gross income and I have an expense for the taxes withheld. I will revise the numbers once he receives another paystub which should be Friday. Yay! /p p So, here is March #8217;s spending. As always, my comments are below. /p p center img src="http://www.bloggingawaydebt.com/Images/march07expenses.gif" / /center strong Income /strong : The gross income for March was still fairly strong, but lower than February. I see February #8217;s income, and it makes me want to try to have a goal of making that much per month because if we made that much every month our debt would be paid off way ahead of schedule. /p p strong Auto:Insurance /strong : I have been thinking about possibly taking off the collision and comprehensive coverage on our car. That would save us quite a bit of money per month. Seeing as our car is still worth around USD5,000 - I #8217;ll hold off for a little while longer and keep the extra coverage. /p p strong Cigarettes /strong : The spending for cigarettes is down. It is still the monkey on my back to get rid of!! But, that #8217;s something I am going to tackle over at a href="http://bloggingawayfat.com" Blogging Away Fat /a . /p p strong Donations /strong : I #8217;ll be the first to admit that we do not give all that much monetarily. Slowly, I am trying to give more to causes that I believe in. A a href="http://www.bloggingawaydebt.com/2007/02/sharing-a-readers-debt-story/" reader #8217;s debt story /a reminded me that I should make another contribution to a href="http://modestneeds.org" Modest Needs /a so I did. /p p strong Finance Charges /strong : Finance charges are still under USD100, which is great. In June I lose the 0% offer on one of my cards and who knows what my rate will be after that (probably around 16%). Nothing real promising has come my way in terms of transfering that balance to a new card. We #8217;ll see. /p p strong Food /strong : Lots of money going out for groceries in March. I can #8217;t help but think it #8217;s because we spent so little (compared to previous months) in February. Perhaps we normalize at around USD400/month. We #8217;ll have to see. I am planning to get some a href="http://www.bloggingawaydebt.com/2007/04/getting-coupons-for-the-products-that-you-actually-use/" coupons for the products we normally use /a (so far, I #8217;m batting 100% for writing and getting coupons!). Dining is going down, though, and that is awesome. /p p strong Gifts Given /strong : March is a month of birthdays for us, mine as well as my mom #8217;s. Giving gifts has always been a spot for overspending for me. /p p strong Household /strong : The household category holds many things related to house and home. To see this month #8217;s breakdown, please click a href="http://www.bloggingawaydebt.com/Images/march07household.gif" here /a /p p The biggest spending here was for furniture. My husband #8217;s computer chair broke and he had been using the rocking chair from our living room. That broke as well after a few months so we went to Walmart and bought a new chair and guess what? You guess it #8230;it broke too. He #8217;s being stubborn and living with the broken chair for a while. No more chairs from Walmart. /p p strong Interest Expense /strong : This is the cost of interest for our mortgage and school loans. Not pretty. Once our credit cards are paid off we will definitely be paying off some of our student loans. /p p strong Medical /strong : Here #8217;s the new big expense. Our health insurance policy that we pay out-of-pocket. I do have the next bill, and it raised to USD800 every two months because my husband and I are both 30 now. Yuk. The Medical:Other category is for everything else like over the counter medicines, bandaids and the like. /p p strong Taxes /strong : This category takes into consideration all taxes paid from income, as well as sales taxes and property taxes. There #8217;s not too much that can be done here. /p p strong Utlities /strong : No, I didn #8217;t go crazy and get a mega cellphone plan LOL. I decided to get a yearly plan for our Tracfone instead of paying every other month for a recharge card. So, the USD106 is for the entire year. Breaking it down, it is a savings of approximately USD21/year. /p p Electric isn #8217;t the greatest but our Gas wasn #8217;t too bad. The water bill actually went up due to a rate increase. Month and month again, we have never went over the minimum water usage level. So, we cannot decrease that bill any more than it is. /p p strong FINAL THOUGHTS /strong /p p March wasn #8217;t that bad of a month. My husband still had income from his temporary job which was nice (by the way, just this week he did receive a few more hours after weeks of nothing). I hope he continues to get some hours for a little while at least. /p p I think what I am going to do when I have time is look at the first quarter of this year and compare to last year. If I do, and I see anything interesting I will post it on here. /p p Oh, and I receive this question often #8230;Where is my mortgage? My mortgage payment is USD323/month and it includes a payment towards principal on my mortgage as well as interest and the amount that goes to escrow to pay taxes and insurance. I track my finances like a business so the only thing you will see on these expense reports is the interest expense. Since my mortgage is young, we pay a lot in interest right now. The rest of the payment goes towards the asset account (escrow) and the liability account (mortgage). If you use Quicken and are wondering how to do that, I wrote a tutorial on a href="http://quickenhead.com/2007/01/03/tracking-your-mortgage-and-escrow-account-in-quicken/" I #8217;m a Quicken Head /a . Changes in the escrow and mortgage show up in my a href="http://www.networthiq.com/people/Blogging_Away_Debt" Net Worth Report /a . /p p As always, I welcome questions/comments. /p p a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/bloggingawaydebt/NCQi?a=oe597k" img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/bloggingawaydebt/NCQi?i=oe597k" border="0" /img /a /p div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/bloggingawaydebt/NCQi?a=DGPd8Opv" img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/bloggingawaydebt/NCQi?i=DGPd8Opv" border="0" /img /a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/bloggingawaydebt/NCQi?a=aAAVuEXi" img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/bloggingawaydebt/NCQi?i=aAAVuEXi" border="0" /img /a /div ...read full story