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| spending over time; yellow is last year, green is this year |
Justin and I spent more in November of 2014 than we did in November 2013. I think it was because we were buying plane tickets to Europe last year at this time. As it turns out, many of the blogs I follow do tend to post some pretty great flight deals at this time of year; is it due to the holiday season? Either way, I was grateful that we spent less than half as much. Unfortunately, by comparison to October, which included a mini vacation to DC, we spent approximately 1% more. How? I'm not quite sure. Surely car repair, phone repair, and a new blender could not cost nearly as much as traveling, could they? (…says the person who temporarily owned a BlendTec blender.) Hopefully this month we will be able to get back on track and keep our spending to a minimum even though we have already been thrown off. Can we spend as little as we did in August even with Christmas (and gifts) on the horizon? Only time will tell…
During the month of November, Capitol One 360 was offering a deal wherein you could open a checking and savings account with them, deposit a certain amount, and you would receive $200. (Technically it was a bit more complicated than that, but you could get the gist.) I think opening that account gave us a little bit of extra money. We also used some Amazon gift certificates that I had won to pay for something my grandfather wanted on Amazon. (He doesn't have the internet or much tech knowledge, so Justin was helping him.) When he paid Justin back in cash, we had "magically" transformed my gift cards into cash. YAY! Other than those two methods, I'm not sure how we ended up with a 10% increase in our assets (reaching our peak).
I'm grateful to note that our debt has decreased in the past month by a whopping 3%. (Surprise, surprise. I know. This percentage never really seems to change.) It is nice to see a 9% total decrease from our peak of most debt in July. We are slowly but surely (and steadily) paying down credit cards and student loans. I wish we could pay it down faster, but that would require either more income earned or less of the income spent, both of which can happen but currently aren't. Still I am grateful for minimal improvement because minimal improvement is improvement. Living below your means is a lifestyle challenge and while we could decrease our spending even more, I do feel we have done well in getting to our current state of not spending more than we make; others struggle with it on a daily basis.
My favorite section of this post because of how much we've improved over the past year is net worth. We had a 5% improvement in the past month and an overall 15% improvement since May. FIFTEEN PERCENT!!! Yeah. I don't know what to say. I like improving our net worth. It makes me happy.
Are you using Mint to track your budgeting and finances? Do you struggle with not spending too much in November and December? Are you ready for the new year to give yourself a chance to begin again? I am! Hope everyone has a fantastic Monday!
