Pie Chart

One of my hobbies is tracking data about myself. My first recollection of this is from high school. I had allergies and sneezed a lot. I tracked my sneezes and had separate columns for each place I sneezed: home, the bagel store I worked at, school, outside, etc. For an entire year, I managed to track all of my sneezes. Though I no longer have the data, I believe my peak sneeze day was 100 sneezes. Those of you who have only known me as an adult can now rest assured that I truly was a huge nerd.

More recently, I have kept charts for flossing my teeth, eating fruits and vegetables, and my running/rehab exercises (further evidence that I am still a huge nerd). For 2010, my New Year's resolution was to keep track of where all my money goes. I kept receipts and looked closely at each month's bank statement so that I could categorize my expenses. I tracked all of this for a full year and finally got around to summarizing everything a few weeks ago. With some assistance, I even made myself a nifty little pie chart.

Overall, I'm pleased with the results. Bills and savings are my top two expenses. My main goal of this tracking was to see where I could cut spending without decreasing my overall quality of life. I believe there is still room for improvement here. I made a chart excluding my savings and bills so I could better compare all my other spending.

In this chart, my top expenses are: my car, grocery store food, fitness, hobbies, and health. Most of these are necessities for me. Buying healthy foods, joining a gym, going to the doctor/dentist and engaging in my hobbies are all things that make my life better and are investments for the future. Someday, I would like my car expenses to go down, but I don't think I can significantly decrease car-related spending at this time. I have started taking the bus, but I have to pay my car insurance regardless. If I were to target one area that has room for improvement, it would be going out to eat. Though it is a mere 4% of my total expenses, I think that I could cut this area in half without reducing quality of life. In fact, cooking at home more and eating out less would probably improve my overall quality of life.

I am glad I took the time to look at where all my money is going. The results were useful and I now have a good baseline to look at for the future. Craig and I regularly talk about our future and some of that includes the possibility of moving to a much smaller city. Leaving the big city of Phoenix could mean a decrease in income. A goal I have for myself is to never feel trapped in a job for fear of losing an income and lifestyle that I have become dependent upon. Becoming more aware of my expenses and where expenses can be cut is a good first step for me to meet that goal.