I believe I've mentioned how much I love to work on my budget. Well.....last night I spent from 6 pm until 10 pm setting up my spreadsheet differently so that it matched my actual budget book more. I had originanlly set up this spreadsheet when I took my Personal Finance class this summer. I had used their categories and was having to combine some of our expensed in order to match. I decided to make it easier on myself.

So I now have a spreadsheet that matches my budget book exactly! Much easier to see where money is going (didn't like that part one bit!) and where I need to budget more.

Clothing is 4 times what I have budgeted!!! I knew it was over, but not by that much! It is awfully expensive with 5 teenagers to try to keep clothes on their backs that fit! And our kids are not the type that have to have the latest fashions. They're so used to hand-me-downs that new clothes are a real luxury.

It also hasn't helped that I've needed so many clothes lately. I'm hypothyroid and over the past 3 years had managed to take off almost 50 pounds. Well, the beginning of this year it came back on with a vengeance, all in the space of just a few months. It took many months for me to put the symptoms together and realize what was wrong. Usually when my thyroid decides to take a vacation I am so tired that I cannot function. This time I had insomnia. So anyway....new clothes for me in bigger sizes really messed up my clothing allowance.

My repair account for my van that we traded in was also double what I had planned for since the engine went and had to be replaced. It was also rusting so once we got a used engine in it we decided to trade it in on a 2005 Equinox.

My furniture/appliance account really took a beating this year too, because we finally replaced the old, worn out washer and dryer plus got new living room furniture. Believe me, it was time for all 3 of them! The kids and I were sick to death of having to sit on the washer each time it spun. Otherwise, it would walk across the bathroom floor. We had a repairman in and it was not worth fixing. We had been doing this for almost 10 years!!! I LOVE my new washer. LOL!

So anyways, that's the results I found from my long evening of crunching numbers. Should have been studying my Accounting 2 lesson, but personal finance is always more interesting to me!