Introducing: Money Smart Fashion's Spending Diary

In an effort to introduce a more consistent financial aspect to my blog I've decided to keep a spending diary each week and share it with you, my lovely readers. As I mentioned in my previous post I got the idea for this from Ramit Sethi's blog I Will Teach You to be Rich. While Ramit normally features anonymous readers my spending diary will be all my own (for now at least). I'm very excited about this because I think by keeping this diary it will help me better understand and control my spending. Plus who doesn't like reading about other peoples business right? Right.

Without further ado, here is my spending from week one:

Day One: No spending today. All my time went to homework and laundry. Funny how that’s both good and awful at the same time.

Day Two: Today is the day most of my bills will be drawn out of my bank accounts.$1144 in total. When I woke up this morning I did my usual double check of my accounts to ensure I had enough funds in all of them. I know that I do, I just tend to second guess myself and worry. Got an offer for a new job today also. I will be making $5000 more then my job now which roughly translates to about $300 more a month. It's a little less then I wanted, but it is a step in the right direction.

Day Three: I double check my accounts today to make sure only the money I expected came out. I also check my credit card to make sure there is no suspicious activity. You can never be too careful. Thanks to the April Challenge I've managed to only spend $50 on my credit card since the beginning of my last statement on the 11th. For me that is amazing. At this rate I am on track to spend only $330 this billing cycle (after you add in the $130 for my automatic bill payments)! 

Day Four: Big day today. I had to put gas in the car and I had lunch with a friend. My goal was to spend less then $45. I ended up spending $32.71 on gas and $6.41on food. Mission accomplished. I normally pack my lunch, but every once and awhile I get together with my friend Mark.

Day Five: Had to squeeze in a doctors appointment before my benefits go away. My co-pay was $35. I also hit up Target, the Post Office and the grocery store. The bill for Target went on SSBF's card but I owe him $5.44 for my gum and an envelope. I bought two multi packs of gum because they were on sale, I saved just $.78, but it least it will last awhile. At the post office, I spent $1.73 on postage to mail my signed offer letter back to Under Armour. Finally at the grocery store I spent $5.99 for coffee creamer and a special monthiversary treat for SSBF.

Day Six: No spending today! It was SSBF's night to buy Chick-fil-a. I was tempted to go out and buy something for lunch because what I packed did not seem appetizing but I was able to resist.

Day Seven: Hooray for Saturday! Not just any Saturday, today officially marks my last Saturday at Enterprise!! I came up with an idea a couple days ago to make a scrapbook of all the letters, cards, and notes that SSBF and I have wrote to one another. I hate throwing stuff like that away, but as of right now its just sitting in a box in a closet. We went to Michael's today and I bought a scrap book and some card stock, total for that came to $27.54.

Thoughts: All said and done this week I spent $1258.82 with $1144 of that being on credit card bills. $700 of that being from the credit card that I pay off on a monthly basis. Sick gross.While credit cards are the bulk of my monthly spending I've noticed that my seemingly small purchases tend to add up.

Since this is my first time doing this, please let me know your thoughts. Good? Bad? Needs Improvement? Also, I would love for any of you lovely readers to contribute your own spending diary. Please e-mail me if you are interested: grace.croshaw@gmail.com.