Where My Money Goes...

If you look at my blogroll you'll see that I read a few personal finance blogs. Personal finance is something I'm interested in, but I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with it. I started out my career working at a bank...and while I'm not a math person, I love making numbers match up. Like balancing a checkbook. And figuring out where money is going. As I've written in previous posts, in the past few years I've gotten ahold of my financial life and spending tendencies. I'd say at the age of 30, I'm pretty financially stable (let's hope it stays that way!). I spend enough money to enjoy myself and my life (some dinners out, nice things, etc), but I manage to save a fair amount as well (for the most part...but depends on the month!).

In any case, one thing that my detail-oriented, slightly obsessed with organization self loves is Mint.com. With a little bit of input from me, it tracks all of my accounts (checking, savings, credit card, 401K, etc.), my net worth, and gives me nice pretty graphs to track my spending. It's great! I've been using Mint for about 6 months now, so today I did a breakdown analysis of where I've been spending my money. There were a few interesting things that I noticed.

• The Entertainment Category was dominated by spending on the Arts. 63%. That makes me happy. Mostly towards opera tickets and other musical performances. This category contains other spending like movies, books, music (iTunes, etc).
• Food was interesting as well. 37% to groceries, 32% to restaurants, 23% to wine (more on that in another post to come...with pictures!), and 4% to fast food. I'd like to cut the restaurants down...but I'm glad the fast food isn't more than it is!
• 44% of personal care is hair. Shows where my priorities are in that department, I guess!
• Travel was only 5% of my entire spending. With 2 big trips this spring mostly paid for, I expected it to be much higher!
• Health and fitness was 3% of the total, and Sports was 95% of that. Mostly race entry fees and running gear. Gotta stay in shape, you know! Better than $100 a month for a gym membership!
• Shopping was dominated (64%) by my 30th birthday diamond earring purchase. I was surprised, however, that I spent as much as I did on clothes (28%). I always think that I don't buy clothes that often...but apparently I do!
• Overall, Food was my biggest expense at 24% of the total. Followed by Home at 17% (which includes rent, home furnishings, but not bills/utilities). Shopping accounted for 16% of the total (again, the earrings contributed to that, I think). Those were the big 3. Kinda what I expected, but still interesting to see on paper.

All in all, I think I do a pretty good job of spending on things that are meaningful and that I need. It's also comforting to always know exactly where it is going by using Mint!