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=====$73.45
Groceries===$135.50 ==== $230.61
Non-Food===$17.00
Clothes ====$35.00======$8.45
Grooming===$15.00
Gas======$25.00=======$29.60
Pets====== $50.00=== ==$82.56
HH items===$42.50=====$158.98
Fares== ====$9.00 =====$20.00
Entrainments= $12.00
Garden =====$10.00====$28.56
Gifts & Donations =$35.00
Medical =====$15.00======$44.50
Diabetes Expenses====$50===$43.47
Misc ======$9.00
Personal Allowance =$85.00 ====$51.04
Note only one amount is no spend

Budgeted for this period $580 spent $811.27
No Spending days over the 28 days = 11 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, bought a Medicine and vitamins tablets.

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.

Diabetes Expenses – Books $43.47
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.

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 $1125 so no balance this month. 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.

My food went up this month because I am stockpiling items that I will use over the winter months hopefully my food amounts will start to get back to a normal range but may be a little higher as I need to change to some more expensive range in a few things like bread is now $5.00 per loaf instead of $1.49 per loaf, and I need to buy more nuts and seeds as well special grains.

As for food out, I dined out a 7 times this month costing between $4 & $18 a time most were around the $10 mark as I can no longer eat at fast food outlets. That $9.00 meals at casino is looking the healthiest and best deal in the city for now.

Another large category is for the household section that was a once off purchase of Gerni (water pressure machine) costing $149.00. This was a need as with all the wet weather we are having slimy paths and steps are becoming an issue.

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 by $ 251.27 on budget for amount. This equals the cost of the Gerni and extra I laid out in food stuff this month in stockpiling both for my own and pets.

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