What an unusual spending month October turned out to be…
$810.00 : Family
$700.00 : Daycare
$498.72 : Mortgage
$350.07 : Business Expenses
$326.80 : Gasoline
$322.22 : Auto Repair
$228.27 : Auto Insurance
$129.54 : Electric
$112.00 : Hockey Jersey
$100.00 : Cash
$90.00 : Auto Registration
$85.00 : Toddler Computer Class
$68.16 : Homeowners Insurance
$67.30 : Cable/Internet
$48.47 : Natural Gas
$47.00 : Clothing
$40.08 : Life Insurance
$27.00 : Fast Food
$22.18 : Rakes and Mouse Traps
$20.20 : Toddler Hockey Stick
Grand total comes to $4093.01 which is actually a lot lower than I’d expected considering all of the “extra” expenses that came up.
The family expenses were sky high this past month because the balance of a credit card that isn’t reported on here got a bit larger than I was comfortable with.
FULL DISCLOSURE ALERT — I only report *my* assets, liabilities, and expenses on this site. My wife has her own income, her own retirement accounts, her own car, and her own month-to-month and daily expenses.
If you’ve ever wondered why I never seem to list groceries on my expense reports, well, that’s cause she buys them. Along with diapers, half of daycare, and countless other things that I kinda like not ever really having to worry about.
So, anyway, one of her credit cards needed an additional payment.
The daycare bill went down this month. No, not because the rate went down but because we’d been overbilled for every other month this year. Hooray for us — for this month, anyway…
Business expenses were high again. Ugh. This time I could blame Hurricane Sandy (and probably file an insurance claim) but that’d just be a weak excuse and, frankly, crooked too.
Anyway, while restarting my servers (after shutting them down for the expected power outages during the hurricane), the sync scan reported that one of the drives in my RAID array was failing… and then, yep, it failed.
End result, I purchased two larger replacement drives that’ll cure the problem, restore redundancy, and expand my storage space.
The car repairs were for the Land Rover…again. One morning I went out to start the car and the engine wouldn’t turn. No biggie, I’ve got four cars, so I jumped in another one and it was dead too.
Awesome.
Yeah, it was a great morning.
The Rover just needed a new battery and it’s back up and running just fine now. The other dead car probably just needs a new battery too but we’re going to get rid of the car soon anyway so, for now, if we need it, we’ll jump it.
Yeah, yeah… I bought a hockey jersey. Whatever. At least it was cheap.
Auto Registration comes up every now and then.
Toddler computer class is brand new. Yep, they’re putting three year olds on computers these days. It’s insane, Duncan’s command of the mouse blows my mind. I’m not sure I’d even figured out how to turn on a television when I was three. On that note, Duncan has mastered the television remote as well.
The cost was so high because it was the first month — it’s just a $40 expenditure per month from here on out. I think it’s worth it. The jump start he’s getting by taking part in something like this is priceless.
Ahhhh…homeowners insurance. I’ve never once not paid for the entire year on this but the money just wasn’t there when it needed to be so I made a partial payment. Not sure if I’ll pay the rest of the balance in the coming week or just continue on this monthly payment plan.
In the end, I’m still thankful that I have conventional homeowners insurance.
Remeber that internet/cable company rant I mentioned in last month’s spending report? You know, the one you probably haven’t read yet because I just posted it a few minutes ago? Well, in the end, we’re saving some coin now. Sure, we only have like 20 channels but we still get the ones we want and they’re still in HD. Even better, we’ve rid ourselves of the clunky cable box and it’s terrible remote! Woo-hoo!
More clothing expenses. This time it was for a pair of shoes for me. They’re pictured up above.
My wife has been doing it for years and I’m finally following suit — using a card at a fast food restaurant. In the past, I’ve always used cash but I’m catching up with the times. Slowly.
And since the weather is getting colder (the mice are moving indoors) and the leaves are coming down, I had to pick up a few mousetraps and a toddler sized rake. So far I haven’t caught a single mouse (though I’m aware of their existence) but the lawn is mostly raked!
And Henrik now has the motor skills to play hockey with me and Duncan so I went out and bought him a real stick. I bought him a righty since he seemed to favor that side with the plastic stick but as luck would have it, he’s holding the new one like he’s gonna shoot lefty. D’oh!