Although I stopped tracking my expenses in 2007 when I got stressed (which happened several times), I thought I’d try to reconstruct my expenses from other methods. I tried to use my debit or credit card whenever possible so it makes it a bit easier to reconstruct.
Between my husband and I, we held a total of 4 jobs in 2007. I had a part time job which I quit in January of 2007 and I think I made about $200 gross, I am waiting for that w2 to arrive. My husband began his newest job (which he quit last week) in October 2007 and that is the 2nd w2 I am waiting for. My husband made about $5,000 gross (I think) in 2007 at the new job. So far minus the two w2s I am waiting for, we made a grand total of $26,477 (gross). So our gross income in 2007 is hovering at around $30,000. Not poverty level, but I am actually shocked at how little we made.
As for expenses, my credit union sold its credit card service to FIA (also called MBNA) in around March 2007. This is my oldest credit card which I used for all purchases before I switched to using HSBC which gives me 1% cash back on all purchases. I don’t have my credit card statements with me right now, so I can’t figure out how much I paid for textbooks in the spring semester for 2007. But here are my expenses for the most part:
Rent: $7,626 (we had a roommate for about 5 months last year with whom we split bills and rent)
Utilities: $2,539 (includes water, electricity, gas, cell phone - we don’t have a landline, DSL (naked which doesn’t require landline)
Tuition and books: $8,101 (doesn’t include cost of books from Spring semester, but I would guess it was about $300. Includes cost of RN exam which husband took + study materials of $99. Includes student loan payments)
Insurance + Medical: 546.36 (this was for my birth control pills and insurance for my husband when he was working part time. It was a high deductible insurance plan)
Roth IRA: $600 (This is for husband. I opened the account in around October 2007)
Food: $2,280 (includes restaurant dining. This is the number that is most off about at least $1,000 or more because many of our grocery and dining purchases were paid with cash. I can’t reconstruct all the amounts because I don’t have my account books with me) . Another significant factor about our food is that until about June we ate organic food about 50% of the time. After I found out about the riot for austerity project and read about the food industry we switch to eating organic food 90% of the time, and around October or so we switch to eating local, organic food 80 - 90% of the time. I am basing the percentages on credit card statements that show where I went shopping for food. The non local items have been flour and coffee for the most part. This is one of the reasons I wanted to micromanage our consumption this year, because I wanted to see exactly how expensive it was to eat locally and eat well.
Misc.:$4,730 (This includes household purchases, book purchases, entertainment, an acting class my husband took, charity which was about $60, cost of mailing things, other piddly stuff that I didn’t feel like categorizing)
Other stuff: $200. This was what I paid in interest on either my line of credit (used to pay tuition) or credit card when we had a rough month early in 2007 (moving unexpectedly). I’ve made about $50 in the HSBC cash back program, and plan on not paying a single cent in interest this year.
When plugging in the numbers into turbo tax, so far our refund is $47. Ideally it should be $0 because I adjusted our withholdings last year to include our student loan payments. However anything that we do get in a refund will be divided into student loan payments and our emergency fund.
