Every year, I total up the amount I’ve spent during each month on miscellaneous expenses. For my budgeting purposes, “miscellaneous” includes anything that isn’t an auto-debited bill or debt payments. Essentially, that means things like gas, groceries, clothes and medical co-pays are lumped right in with concert tickets, meals out and vino (because life is definitely better with a bit of vino ) I also include a separate breakdown for all travel-related expenses.

Here’s how I fared for 2012, followed by a side-by-side view of 2011 vs. 2012 for the same categories:

2012 Miscellaneous Spending

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few notes:

The miscellaneous of the miscellaneous (not confusing at all, eh?) includes concert tickets, haircuts, furniture (I like to buy secondhand pieces and refinish them), marathon/race fees, random household expenses like cleaning supplies and paper products, birthday gifts, transit fees (tolls, taxis, subway passes) and a few other irregular expenses.

To keep myself on track, I enter each expense I incur on a separate line item, noting the purchase, date and total amount spent. Moving forward, I'd like to pare down this category so it's easier to have dedicated categories for all tracking purposes.

Blog/online expenses included the self-hosting and domain transfer for this blog as well as hosting and domain name purchases for my other budding online ventures. Condo expenses included all of my random DIY projects as well as installing crown molding in two rooms (by myself...woot, woot!).

The 'overages' category here is perhaps the worst, most embarrassing part of my budget this year--it's the total amount I went over from my $500/month miscellaneous spending budget. Ugh. Clearly this needs to change in 2013 as this is not a sustainable way to budget--these overages were recognized in the same month's budget, but they could have easily been avoided had I been better about spending. Onward and upward!

 

2012 Travel Spending

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few more notes:

As I detailed in my 2012 Hits and Misses post yesterday, I didn't end up going to Tanzania due to my marathon injury so all of that money was refunded to me and put back into savings. Acadia is my annual Labor Day camping trip, RTB is from running the Reach the Beach relay in the fall, Essex was a long weekend trip to the Essex culinary resort in Vermont and Sunday River was our holiday trip we just returned for (yay for friends having a family cabin so we stayed for free).

 

2011 vs. 2012

Now comes the ugly fun part--two years side by side!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thankfully, I did manage to reduce my miscellaneous of the miscellaneous spending and my meals out spending which were my two spending-related goals for 2012. But, I clearly have my work cut out for me in 2013! First up will be addressing the overage issue, then I'll tackle the meals out and gas expenses.

A few immediate changes for 2013 will include no pet-related expenses as my kitties are moving to a new home (difficult decision but look for a very exciting announcement that's related to their departure!), ideally no more car maintenance expenses as BMW covers all oil changes, brake pads, etc. for the first 50K miles, I will hopefully not lose my iPhone and therefore have no cell phones to buy and I'll have no blog-related expenses unless I decide to do another redesign because my hosting is paid through 2017.

Check back soon for a complete listing of my 2013 goals...

 

Do you track your miscellaneous spending? How did you fare in 2012?