About two months ago I started reading Get Rich Slowly. A month ago based on something I must have read there, or through there, I put a small notebook in my back pocket to find out just where all my money was going. I mean, I knew, or at least had a pretty good idea about, the the big expenses: rent, utilities, student loans, etc. But what about that sub I had for lunch at work from the deli downstairs? What about playing pool with Chris every Tuesday night? What about the $15 here for a cd or $9 there for a book? Surely that must add up…

It does. Some of it more than you might think.

For the last month I have been recording in that notebook the cost and purpose of every cash transaction that leaves my pocket. This afternoon I labeled and sorted all of those entries. I also went back through my last month’s bank account and credit card statements and labeled and sorted the last month’s transactions.

I grouped all of my expenses into 5 categories: Primary Expenses (rent, utilities, student loans), Food (groceries and dine/take out), Transportation (public transportation and car costs), Entertainent (media, going out, etc), and Misc (everything else) with subcategories under those. For one-time transactions, I grouped and counted them as they appeared in last month’s expense report. For less regular monthly expenses, like groceries, car repairs and parking tickets, I averaged the last 6 months’ expenses. I religiously pay for these expenses using plastic (and, like a good boy, almost as religiously pay them off completely every month if that plastic happens to be credit), but Bank of America’s online transaction history only goes back 6 months, and I didn’t feel like going through my pile of old, unopened paper statements. For large regularly recurring monthly expenses like utilities and loan payments, I averaged the complete history of monthly costs made since moving into this apartment for each, using the utlity companies’ websites online payment and statement history.

My spending breaks down like this:

• 36% rent and utlities
• 10% student loans
• 19% food
  • 41% grocery
  • 30% eating breakfast and lunch during the week
  • 29% eating out/take out/delivery weekday dinners and weekends
• 13% transportation
  • 15% MBTA
  • 85% Car (insurance, repairs, gas, parking tickets)
• 14% entertainment
  • 39% media; books, cds, dvds
  • 61% experience; concerts, games of pool, netflix, air america podcasts
• 8% miscellaneous
  • 70% Credit card interest and late payments.
  • 30% Other misc expenses.

My actual entertainment spending may be higher than it is here. These expenses should probably be amortized over the year, but I frequently pay for these things (concert tickets especially) in cash, so I don’t have a years worth of payments quite as handy as I do for groceries and car repairs. Also, the amount of money I spend going out may shift somewhat dramatically month-to-month and season-to-season depending on when bands tour and other factors. This is a subject for further inquiry.

Despite this potential innaccuracy, there are some observations and lessoned learned to be culled from all this:

1. I’m spending more monthly than I did last year, but I’m living more cheaply. Based on an estimate of monthly spending using last year’s income and savings at the end of the year, I spend about $150-$200 more per month, which is slightly less than the increase in the amount I’m paying for car insurance and rent since last year.
2. Being lazy about cooking dinner isn’t costing me as much as I thought it was, though it hasn’t really decreased the cost of groceries, somehow.
3. I should bring my lunch to work far more often than I do (but I knew this already).
4. Having a car is expensive, and getting enough parking tickets that their cost actually figures into your monthly budget doesn’t help. It might be time to play the cost/benefit game with Zip Car.
5. Paying off the credit card is good. Paying it on time is better. (I paid twice as much in late fees over the past year as I did in interest). Though neither cost broke the bank, it could have bought a handful more CDs instead of nothing.
6. In the grand scheme of things, paying for the wash/dry/fold instead of spending time at the laundromat is a good choice for me. With free time valued at 150% of work time it comes out about even to not have to sit at the laundromat or fold clothes.