April Income/Expenses

See, I still have two days left of May and I'm getting my April income/expense sheet up. I think it's partially late because I've been afraid of what I would find. Yes, we're in the red by $1029, which is due to my plane ticket to visit my grandmother ($280) as well as my extensive dental work ($471). Luckily we had a great month in March, so we haven't bounced any checks, though you'll notice that the credit card payments are down. This is also due to the fact that Basil's family is visiting in June, so he's saving his crafty side-business income for June, rather than making extra credit card payments. Also, rent increased $100 a month, so we'll have to get used to that.

The other really big increase is gasoline. Just two months ago we were paying $250 a month for gas, then March was $350 and now April is $375! That's $125 more! During the week we pretty much just commute to work (public transportation isn't much of an option where we live). I drive 20 miles round trip and Basil logs 50 miles. The problem is our weekend, because to do our free things, we sometimes drive a little distance. Maybe we should try to do as little driving as possible one month to see if we can bring that down. That would be tough, but worth it.

Our dining was half of last month, but still more than we'd like at $306. Plus, we had a visiting teenager, so groceries were up to $514.

Our household expenses were way down as we only bought a water purifier pitcher for the fridge, to cut down on buying bottled water. We'll check out next month to see if that worked.

Everything else is pretty self-explanatory. We only get an electric bill every other month, but it's still cool, so there are no outrageous a/c-related expenses yet. Basil has to have rivulets of sweat dripping off his horned-rim glasses before I'll allow him to turn it on anyway.

So with $125 more a month in gas and $100 more in rent, that's $225 that we have to figure out where to cut or bring in as more income. I may have to start my own crafty side business.