Mid-Month Mint: February

Let's take a look at my Mint pie chart for February so far:

As you can see, this month looks a little different than previous months. First off, it's worth mentioning that my student loan payment hasn't happened yet, so that will shift things around significantly. Second, there's a category here that I haven't seen in a while: travel.

I've mentioned a few times that I have a dedicated travel savings account, and this month was the first time that I put it to use, as I booked a cross-country plane ticket for May! I think this was the first time I've booked a trip with dedicated funds set aside to pay for it, and it felt pretty great. I don't have to worry about cutting down in other areas to pay my credit card bill this month; instead I can focus on continuing to contribute to my travel fund for the other trips I want to book and the expenses outside of the literal travel to get places. This feels like a huge step!

Health and fitness also makes an appearance here, as I've signed up for my second half marathon, taking place in late May. It was a less expensive race than my first one, and I think it will be fun. If my travel fund allows, I might even go a day early to the town where the race is taking place to avoid having to rent a car and deal with driving and parking. I'll have to see what work looks like that weekend, but it would certainly be more enjoyable that way.

Food and dining is a smaller piece of the pie this month, as I've been focused on not eating out for any meals - I'll talk more about that in a later post.

In all, February is going well spending-wise, and I'm hopeful that I can keep up the good work!

Mid-Month Mint: January 2015

Let's go ahead and make this a series, shall we?

This month, my Mint pie (that does not sound delicious) is not looking too great:

That "home" section is really taking over - stupid table. You'll also notice that the education slice is a bit underwhelming. Don't worry, I'm not going back on my word already and paying less on my loan. I made a payment at the beginning of January for half of my Stafford loan, and I'm making the other half at the start of next week. I also just sent a check for my family loan, so that will be reflected next week as well.

The food and dining section and shopping sections are, as usual, where I need to focus my energies. I'll talk more later this week about my plans for getting those under control. Particularly when it comes to shopping, I've got a fairly rigid idea in mind, and one that I think I'll actually be able to stick to!

In all, the chart above isn't really surprising to me, but it is helpful to look at my spending like this, and see how one or two decisions can really impact my financial picture. I'll check in on this again at the end of the month, so we can see how the categories hopefully shift a bit.

Mid-month Mint

I use Mint to track my expenses. Here's what my pie (yum) for December looks like so far:

As you can see, home and education are the biggest pieces, with food and dining coming in third.This is probably a pretty typical pie for me, although some months entertainment is bigger, and in the summer, travel is a piece of that as well.

One of the things I love about Mint is being able to look at my spending for the week, the month, the year, etc. My pie for 2014 so far looks more like this:

In the last few months I've gotten more serious about cutting back my spending in all areas, but especially food and dining and entertainment. I'm excited to see how my pie will differ in 2015!