First: Utilities. My goal is to get both gas and electric bills to stay on the baseline. No tiers. To date the gas has stayed there but electricity even hit tier 3 this last month! Fortunately, my daughter happened to notice that my freezer had not been closing right when she closed it. She took some things out and it closes again. It is possible that this has been happening for a while and I did not realize it. If so, I should see some difference in next month's electric bill.
Groceries: The goal I set on March 1:My modest goal for March: bring the three-month total down to $18 per day. To do that, I will need to spend no more than $509 this month on groceries. Groceries for March were $354. An average of $11.42 per day. Nice work. I know some of that savings came from my eating things that were already in my cupboard or freezer, and some from occasionally eating out. My goal for April is to maintain spending at $15 per day or less.
Shopping: My goal for the first week of March was to spend nothing on "shopping". Now, "shopping" does not include spending on things like dish detergent or new plates or other household things, for example. It also does not include gifts that I buy for others.
I met that first goal, then set another for the next week of no more than $25 for the week. I chose to stay with this goal, deciding that if I do not spend the $25 it will carry over to the next week. This means I had a goal of spending about $75 on shopping last month. I spent $23.64. On books, as it happens. So, doing a rough rounding, that gives me an extra $50 for April, for a goal of $150.
Using cash. Another goal was to start using cash for some expenditures. I haven't done that yet. I'm still thinking about which would be the best category. Perhaps groceries.
Cable. I cut back my cable bill by eliminating premium channels. I don't know how that will play out in the final bill. I know I can do more.
Stocks. I am still working on this. I funded my new Options House account with money from selling some stock on buyandhold.com. When that money is available I will buy some Mattel primarily, and let it sit. I think, from reading the info on Options House, that I can do that. I don't think I have to keep buying every month.
So let's have a look at the graph for March:
Clearly, my house costs and health insurance are big numbers. And once again, my transfers to stock investments do not show up. Fees and charges is a bigger number than it should be. Part of that comes from credit card debt. It is probably time to do an analysis of that debt and work on paying down the card with the highest interest rate. That will be the next thing I work on.
