As I work on 28 day cycles, my dates may be out to a calendar months so here are the figures for my last period.

It’s time to start again on reviewing my monthly daily living allowance.

These are the categories for this challenge.
Items === Approx Budget===Spent
Eating out===$35.00=====$53.20
Groceries===$135.50 ==== $133.84
Non-Food===$17.00=====$8.39
Clothes ====$35.00======$4.40
Grooming===$15.00======$22.90
Gas======$25.00=======$23.18
Pets====== $50.00=== ==$67.20
HH items===$42.50=====$54.05
Fares== ====$9.00
Entrainments= $12.00
Garden =====$10.00
Gifts & Donations =$35.00
Medical =====$15.00======$11.20
Diabetes Expenses====$50===$218.86
Misc ======$9.00
Personal Allowance =$85.00 ====$58.06
Note: only one amount it's no spend

Budgeted for this period $580 spent $655.78

No Spending days over the 28 days = 9 days in total.

Personal allowance covers confectionery, lotto, books, stamps, craft & hobby supplies.
Eating out including meals out with family and friends, we all go Dutch.

As for medical this is the extra out of pockets amounts that came up this month this I had a visits to a GP Doctor bulk billed Medicare (FREE), and bought a Monthly Medication.

As for my medical visits out of pocket expensive if they are related to Diabetes then I will class them as Diabetes Expenses will come under this new category. So the $120 eye specialist cost is included here. All the little things that I need to do for this charge over. Like update the books on the my new diet as some are 15 years old and 7 years since I last bought any on this subject and a lot has charged in that time. Joining a Diabetes Australia fee $15.00, all these little extras outside Food as I am on no medication.

Diabetes Expenses – Books $83.86, DAQ fee $15.00, Eye specialist $120 = $218.86
A most will be one off items or once per year expenses. But I need to track these items on my small budget and pension. Each time I pay for some thing in this category I will need to cut something in other categories. I read somewhere that it cost over $4000 per year for non medication diabetes and over $9000 per year for insulin dependent, some of this is pick up with medical refunds and the government discounts for health card users. I think this article was written for Australian but then I have read so much in the last 3 weeks it’s becoming a overload.

My credit cards are still paid in full each month.

I do keep my bill money separated from this summery. This year I will be budgeting around $650 per period month to cover all my bills. This month bills were around $230 and the balance goes into the bill account to cover the next large lot of large bills. These funds do cover all my fixed bills for the year if I can stick to this schedule as I have done for the past ten years or so. This budget will be tight but just doable. On my budget excel modelling chart I can pay the full amount this year by doing this.

If any changes to my spending habits will need to come out of my daily living allowance categories of my budget as my bill categories are very tight now. Still need to work on a few categories as you can see but over all I had a good month. No Savings for this month over $ 75.78 on budget for amount.

Strategy: - Track your daily spending down to the cent by writing it down daily.