Month 2

March proved to be a little more difficult than February when it came to achieving my financial goals. I am finding it difficult to stay within my $80 limit per week when debits that aren’t weekly or monthly expenses come up, such as toiletries, prescriptions, dog groomer fees, etc – which is exactly what happened this month.

While I was able to stay below my grocery budget by $29.36, I was way over budget with the add-on of these additional items by $265.96.
To break it down, here is a view of my spending for the month of March:

Groceries: $220.64
Eating Out: $186.03
Toiletries/Self Care: $184.23
Dog/Cat supplies: $181.56
Office supplies: $45.80
Investments: $35.64
Miscellaneous: Hiking Buff ($7.95), Parking ($1.75), Throo the Zoo 5k ($13.00), Notary ($20.00)

In addition, here are the results of my measurable goals for the month:

OTF (6/8)
Yoga (2/4)
Massage (1/1)
Float (1/1)
Social (9/2)
Outdoor activities (3/8)
Meditation (19/12)
Strength Training (4/4)
Heine Bros/Starbucks (3/2)
Eating out (13/5)

As you can see, there is a strong correlation between the number of times I was social this month and the amount of money that was spent on lunches and dinners out. As I was explaining to a friend of mine, although I’ve limited myself to 5 meals out per month, it is extremely difficult to turn down going out to eat with a friend, or group of friends, when there is also a goal of getting out more socially. Although there should be (and is) more to do with friends than eat out, it seems to be the simplest way to spend time with people when a) you’re going to have to eat anyway, b) the weather has been sub-par and there’s not much to do outdoors, and c) we all seem to be limited on time to do much of anything else. In the end, I decided that spending social time with others was worth blowing my goal of eating out five times per month. Admittedly, however, 4 of these out-of-home feasts were times I went out alone – something that I could look at reeling back in if I am choosing to go out more with friends.

In comparison with February, I was overall less successful in meeting my goals. OTF, Yoga, and Outdoor Activities all came in at a lower number than what I had planned. In contrast, I achieved the goals of Massage, Float and Strength Training, while blowing the Meditation goal way out of the water by more than 50% - I’ve done this by simply making meditation a part of my night-time routine.

Some of these goals will be tweaked, yet again, for the month of April as I would like to put more emphasis on strength training than cardio and will soon be starting my Ohio 70.3 half-Ironman training. It’s been three years since I’ve trained for such an event, and how quickly we forget how grueling and time-consuming training for such a race can be. Since that schedule doesn’t technically start until May, however, I’m going to use April to continue to build my base and work on the goals that I have set for myself – mentally, physically, spiritually and, alas, financially.