Clawing our way to financial independence

First thanks for the links and thoughts on the Smith Maneouvre. For those who would like to read up on this technique, see Million Dollar Journey's articles: 1, 2, 3. My summary was somewhat correct, but I didn't know that one could write off certain types of investment interest earned in Canada- I thought this was only possible with RRSPs. I may post more on this topic, but today I am going to post September's summary.

First- what we spent on our household variable/fixed expenses outside debt and loans.

Sept. 2007
Alcohol	250
Auto	514
Bank Charge	115
Business Office	30
Cash	300
Cell	100
Dining	308
Entertainment	57
Golf	14
Groceries	626
Health	113
Household	96
Insurance	176
Interest Exp	137
Investments	100
Meals & Ent	121
Misc	52
Pets	63
Supplies, Business	469
Tel & Utilities	63
Travel, Business	238
Travel, Personal	340
Union Dues	84
Cable TV/Internet	117
OVERALL TOTAL	4,482

This total is more than TWICE our budget for these type of expenses!

A couple of obvious things stand out- we had a lot of fun this month! As you will see, some of this fun was on credit :(

Alcohol- we went on a wine tour in the Okanagan so about $200 of this is on wine we have yet to drink.
Dining- $100 of this is from our anniversary dinner; probably another $150 or so is from our travels.
Travel, Personal- includes hotel costs and ferry costs for our trip to Okanagan and trip to Ucluelet for family wedding
Groceries- About $126 above our budgeted amount- most spent while away for work and we bought ready to eat meals
Meals and Entertainment- eating out while away on business
Bank charges- what the hell? Actually, this is somewhat incorrect- it is $40 less because I got an overdraft fee refunded, but it must not have posted correctly in Quicken. This still includes 1 insufficient funds charge (because we are switching banks I missed a payment coming out of the old account), plus various overdraft fees, interest, and monthly bank fees.

So not surprisingly, all this spent above and beyond our budget was put on credit cards. (I told you it was an UGH! month). In fact about $2200 is now on credit cards that was not before. I can justify the work expenses for our time away, but I wish we had realized a little better how much in fact we were spending. We were short about $1200 in income this month while we worked on projects we have not yet billed for. AND I dipped into the EF to a tune of $400 to cover this.

I must say I am still struggling with our variable income. It is never consistent, so it makes it difficult to plan for.

Yesterday, in a state of annoyance over one of our credit card bills, I came up with a plan to try and get things under control again. That will be my next post.