What’s up?

It has been a month since I updated my blog and I’m really blaming it on the laziness I feel every single day. I felt I have nothing to update because it is just the start of the year. But then I told myself I better get into blogging again because this will be my online diary. Nope, I will not be writing everything here. Only the important events in our lives.

January has been tough. I am juggling a bunch of things every day. From the hectic schedule at work, doing every day chores in our house, preparing our baby needs (and my needs), learning how to bake, reading books and everything else that needs my attention.

I am already in my 35^th week of pregnancy and every day is a challenge. I’ve been experiencing lower back pain, difficulty in walking because of the extra weight, going to the comfort room more often and having difficulty in breathing because of heart burn. Sometimes I wake up early morning because of leg cramps – to which I already learned the basic first aid. P.S. Leg cramps only happen every time my OB changes my vitamins. So far I experienced leg cramps only thrice.

I am now controlling my carbohydrates intake so that it will be easier for me to give birth. As much as possible I am eating less than a cup of rice each meal. Sometimes I go for 1 cup because the baby inside seems very hungry. >.<

I have also purchased several modern cloth diapers from a friend. I am really determined to go full time on cloth nappying because of the potential savings it can give to us. The initial cost may be plentiful but when you compute total expenses from doing cloth nappying compared to disposable diapers, the difference will be more than double. I just hope my husband is into it also. I’ll try to convince him on the first few months.

Cloth diapers

I’ve been doing bad in terms of our finances. Electric bill and water bill went up, food/misc expenses also went over and beyond our budget. Thanks to our low leisure and car expenditure we were able to save 1000Php from the original planned expenses. I think I need to tweak things a little bit here to stay in our budget for each category. Tipid tipid!

Jan-15
		Planned	Actual	Savings
household	electric bill	1000	1020	-20
	water bill	300	328	-28
	internet	1190	1190	0
	food/misc	8000	8892.82	-892.82
	leisure	2000	699	1301
	car expenditure	5000	4260.77	739.23
TOTAL		17490	16390.59	1099.41

But I am proud to say that we were able to follow our investment plans for the month of January. I convinced husband to contribute much more this year to beef up our retirement fund. In return, I am taking care of the educational fund of our child to be. (I’ve been saving for our child’s education even before we actually have one. Forward thinking eh!)

I think that’s it for January update. I hope I have more time to compose more blogs on the coming days.

Till next time.

In Review: 2014 Food Expenses

I was reviewing our 2014 expenses (well basically those months that I was very diligent in recording how much we spent) and I realized that we are most of the time above our food/grocery budget. To further understand let me show you the actual expenses we incurred for the months of June to December 2014.

June 2014 Summary
		Planned	Actual	Surplus
household	electric bill	1000	1610.63	-610.63
	water bill	300	215.92	84.08
	internet and cable	1190	1190	0
	food/grocery	6000	8848.71	-2848.71
	leisure	2000	0	2000
	Car Expenditure	5000	3000	2000
	TOTAL	15490	14865.26	624.74
July 2014 Summary
		Planned	Actual	Surplus
household	electric bill	1000	708.37	291.63
	water bill	300	165	135
	internet and cable	1190	1190	0
	food/grocery	6000	7872.5	-1872.5
	leisure	2000	1400	600
	Car Expenditure	5000	2300	2700
	TOTAL	15490	13635.87	1854.13
August 2014 Summary
		Planned	Actual	Surplus
household	electric bill	1000	1282	-282
	water bill	300	160	140
	internet and cable	1190	1190
	food/grocery	6000	7900.13	-1900.13
	leisure	2000	1500	500
	Car Expenditure	5000	4710	290
	TOTAL	15490	16742.13	-1252.13
September 2014 Summary
		Planned	Actual	Surplus
household	electric bill	1000	1153.59	-153.59
	water bill	300	151	149
	internet and cable	1190	1190	0
	food/grocery	6000	8793.75	-2793.75
	leisure	2000	0	2000
	Car Expenditure	5000	2000	3000
	TOTAL	15490	13288.34	2201.66
October 2014 Summary
		Planned	Actual	Surplus
household	electric bill	1000
	water bill	300	167.22	132.78
	internet and cable	1190	1190	0
	food/grocery	6000	9589.09	-3589.09
	leisure	2000	2000	0
	Car Expenditure	5000	4085.42	914.58
	TOTAL	15490	17031.73	-2541.73
November 2014 Summary
		Planned	Actual	Surplus
household	electric bill	1000	1159.62	-159.62
	water bill	300	183.46	116.54
	internet and cable	1190	1190	0
	food/grocery	6000	7311.5	-1311.5
	leisure	2000
	Car Expenditure	5000	3889.37	1110.63
	TOTAL	15490	13733.95	-243.95
December 2014 Summary
		Planned	Actual	Surplus
household	electric bill	1000	1062.15	-62.15
	water bill	300	183.46	116.54
	internet and cable	1190	1190	0
	food/grocery	6000	6593.69	-593.69
	leisure	2000	0	2000
	Car Expenditure	5000	4573	427
	TOTAL	15490	13602.3	1887.7

I don’t know if 6000Php is really NOT enough for 2 people (and 2 dogs) in a month. Maybe because we were just cooking what we want and offsetting our food/grocery expenses with our other expenses. As you can see in our summary sometimes we were within budget sometimes we were beyond our budget.

So I talked to my husband about this and we both agreed that we should have a weekly menu to further track our food expenses. I have created one last night for the following week. 

Please pardon the hand writing ^_^

I posted the menu on our fridge hoping that my husband will follow it diligently. 

Hope this method helps! ^_^