Money Tracks

I absolutely LOVED it when I saw my friend Jasmine at Making Restorations start posting a series called Money Diaries. About once a month, she posts every item that she and her husband spent that week. I know that her situation (two full time working adults) is different from my family (one full time working adult, one VERY part-time working adult and three children), but I was still so incredibly inspired by her candid sharing.

Talking about money is one of those things that is totally taboo in our current culture. I’m not entirely sure why. I guess it’s a status thing, that if we don’t make as much money as others, or if we rely on government income, we would be looked down on. But then the problem with this is that we can perceive others as making far more than they really are. We assume that everyone else has it better off and therefore we can’t share how low or high we are financially. It’s like we are all walking around with masks on and sometimes I forget and my mask slips off when I mention actual financial numbers. Some people are appalled and back away slowly (I’ve seriously lost followers on IG from sharing our exact numbers) and some people are thrilled that finally, someone is talking about it! Well, I am here and I am talking about it!

I am gladly going to share one week of spending in our lives. I am not deleting any information or adding any information. Of course, this doesn’t show EVERYTHING and it could be a high spending week or a low spending week. I’m going to choose a random week in January because our finances for February were “frozen” in our spending freeze and don’t accurately reflect our family spending.

Ready or not…here we go!

Sun, Jan 12

Spent $0

Mon, Jan 13

Spent $0

Tues, Jan 14

Haircut for me $37.95

Gas- $38.85

ATM withdrawal- $40 (I know I needed cash for something, but now I cannot for the life of me remember what it was!)

Amazon (new fake wedding band for me)- $18.14

Aldi- $142.63

Home Depot- $9.66

Weds, Jan 15

$0 Spent

Thurs, Jan 16

Cell Phone Bill- $46.48

Family Video Rental- $3.19

Tropical Smoothie- $5.98

Fri, Jan 17

$0 Spent

Sat, Jan 18

Walmart Groceries- $33.93

Totals

Groceries: $176.56

Bills: $46.48

Gas: $38.85

Eating Out & Entertainment: $18.34

Personal Care: $56.09

Home– $9.66

Cash Withdrawal: $40

Total: $385.98

There you have it! One week of spending. Obviously, we didn’t spend much on bills this particular week so I suspect the next week was much more bill heavy than this one!

This was a fun blog post to write, and I think I will try to include a post like this one more often. I know that not everyone is comfortable talking about finances, but I am happy to be someone who opens up about them and starts the hard conversations!