As I mentioned in my July 2007 Income Statement post, I didn’t expected that we would be able to match the relatively low expense levels of July in August. Well, August, with all of its ups and downs, ended up being a great month in terms of our expenses (click spreadsheet below). We only went over budget ~$300, $716.53 of which was for a new mattress. That puts our August expenses $264.69 lower than our July expenses!

In terms of income, August was a mixed bag. I received an extra paycheck this month, but my wife’s 1st paycheck was only for one week. We were able to earn an extra $104.53 thru credit card cash back rewards and $100.00 thru selling our old mattress. And finally, with our increased savings account balance, we earned $12.14 in interest income, our largest amount yet.

September should be a great month incomewise. My wife is expecting a commission check on a job that she referred to her dad’s company (~$700), a final commission check from her old job ($600-$1,000), a final check from the job that laid her off (~$1920), and her first paycheck from her new job(~$1,075). Hopefully, we can continue keeping our expenses down.

July was a strong income month with my wife earning an additional $1,674.68 above her normal pay/auto allowance. We were also able to keep our expenses within reason compared to previous months (click spreadsheet below).

We only went over budget $650, and if you subtract out the $630.44 we spent on business clothing for my wife’s new job, we would have hit our budget mark. It’s encouraging to know our budget is realistic and doable. Although, with a couple of large expenses forecasted for August, it’s doubtful that we will be this close to our budget next month.

We had a lot of money flowing out in June, going over our budget in almost all categories (click on spreadsheet below). I’m beginning to sound like a broken record when it comes to our budget.

My wife and I have committed to doing a better job of watching expenses in July. In fact, we have already declined a couple of social events to help us get July off to a solid start.

Working on it.

We’ve gone over budget each month, so I decided to revise our monthly budget to more accurately reflect our expenses. Our new monthly budget is $6,113.42, to help better account for household expenses, entertainment costs, and a little extra buffer for random expenses.

Nonetheless, we still went over budget, but by a smaller margin. Our total expenses for May were $6,251.88. Click on the spreadsheet below to see the breakdown.