I just had a look over our spending for the month. Not pretty.

Ok, well, the TOTALS are not pretty. Because I have tracked my personal spending in March (not DF and mine combined - that starts next week!), it looks like I have spent waaaaay more than I earnt. And I most likely have. But it does not give the full picture, partly because our accounts have been slowly merging, and partly because I already had some extra money floating around.
But, alas, every week it 'appears' that I have spent around $100 or so MORE than I have taken in.

I think mostly it is due to paying the mortgage AND rent for most of the month. Sure sucked up a lot of money.
I am quite pleased with my 'FUN' money expenditure - it seems I did not spend that much over our 'allowance', and this includes all the dining out we did while our kitchen was packed up.

Our moving and house costs have totalled $278, but that does not include some items which I haven't got totals for. But the $278 was for a tip fee, flea spray at the rental, phone re-connection, and some other things of which I have forgotten already...

Gifts have been low amounts, but there have still been a few. We are getting good at holding back on gift giving. We like to give gifts - and we hardly ever recieve them - and I think it is one of those things we will have to work on. Even though most of the friends no longer give gifts (everyone went through a stage of giving large gifts for a couple of years), sometimes we kind of feel obligated to not show up with empty hands - partly to blame IS that time when everyone was giving gifts. It is odd. Of course, it's nice to give gifts - but I think we have to relax about it a bit because everyone is having hard financial times - and a lot of the time the gifts given could be things they don't need anyway.

Petrol is another expense that I am going to have to monitor. Because I am driving an extra 15-20 minutes a day to work, it is surely going to add up. I would say it will cost me an extra $10-$15 in petrol a week. I am going to have to think of ways to save on this!

Well, that's my rambling for today. I will post the totals that I was tlaking about, tomorrow, when the week ends.