September Financial Report

 The first thing I can say about September is that it felt good to once again see money coming in in a significant way. The longer work hours are a blessing in this way although I am STILL getting used to having a lot less free time for myself.

In short all of the bills got paid this month, I was able to spend quite a bit on restocking the freezer while grocery shopping, I had some maintenance/repair work done on the SUV, and I was able to get not only some items on my list of home improvement/decorating but also a few replacement items for old clothing that I could not use any longer. In addition I paid back a small loan ($200) from oldest son to help college age daughter with two unforeseen expenses in the text book department.

At a total expenditure of $439.77 I am $89.77 over my budgeted amount for food of $350. I am not going to beat myself up about this since I was way under that amount during the summer months. It will all even up by the end of the year.

I did spend a large amount $211.54 on household goods. This included cleaning/paper/health & beauty as well as home improvement items however.

I filled up the SUV this month to the tune of $187.71 so I came in $13.71 under budget there.

$89.32 was spent on maintenance/repair this month. This amount is going to way higher in October when I put four new tires on the SUV. It has to be done though and I am sticking amounts for this away from paychecks in September.

$34.99 was spent in total on work clothing for myself. Son's Homecoming clothes will come out of the October budget.
And I did spend a completely unnecessary $120 on Pampered Chef. Since it will be several months if not a year before another party comes along I figure this balances out to about $12 a month. :-)

Update: I hit that sale at Kohl's and got youngest son a nice cherry red dress shirt and a matching red/black/gray Jerry Garcia tie both on sale, total cost $45 and some change for his Homecoming Dance (date is wearing a black dress with cherry red shoes),with his black suit he will cut a dashing figure. I also picked up three pairs of cotton twill slacks for myself for work. I am upgrading my look since I not only work in the kitchen all day I am now working aftercare and hence meeting and greeting parents when they pick up the kids. I need to look a little nicer than the jeans and cotton tshirts from Target I have been sporting under my apron. The t-shirts I bought yesterday at Target are the 'dressy' kind in a nice fabric with a dressier look to them. Paired with "boyfriend" cardigans and these twill pants my look will still be practical for cooking but also nicer for being 'front of the house' so to speak.