Where did it all go?

When i use to have a real job i remember i never needed to check my statement in order to see where exactly my money is going, because my minimum amount gathered for my bills and rest everything was my shopping. I am a terrific sick shopaholic and i am thankful god took money from me to punish me to keep myself away from buying things.

Well, atleast you aren't wasting money. I have no angels left so what I do financially is up to me. No fall out, no options. Well, a pay day loan and that is all. I do my finances up to three months in advance. I know what I will pay where and how much I will have left. I have to. My mother taught me well in how to keep my books.

I hear ya. We do okay here, but we still are short by the end of the pay period! Of course, someone else mismanaging their money doesn't help, even if their mismanagement does get a lot of work done here! For example, the roomie's nephew had a problem. He needed some extra money - quick. We had it, barely. So, they were here both days for the last two weekends. Yes, we are $400 poorer, but the house got really cleaned, some things that needed doing inside got knocked out last weekend and this weekend it was beautiful and we got a couple of sheds sorted. I took over a dozen boxes to Goodwill and the nephew filled up his truck bed with trash - not including what we put in the trash dumper and recycling container! The yard also got leaves and limbs cleaned up! However, I'm sure I've reported about shed work for well over a year now, you know what? We still haven't touched the white one!

For me, the inescapable expenses would be the house's installment, personal insurance, groceries and utilities which is also the major part of my bank deductions. Unlike the house's repayments or personal insurances, I could control the groceries and utilities bills to save some money for the family. For groceries, I would get the bulk of it from wholesale hypermarkets and pay with my cash back scheme credit card for the items. For the utilities, it would be monitoring my usage on water, electricity and careful with signups with broadband and cellular networks. After all the expenses, I could still manage to save about 10 percent of my monthly income and allowance. I think it is important to spend some time to check on our expenses from time to time to allow us to better manage our finances and most of all, put our excess money into savings.

It's the economy, I'm sure. Gas prices are rising again and so are food prices. I just bought 3 pounds of 80/20 ground beef and it cost around $9.50. I bought the same thing last week and it was only around $7.50! Two dollars more in just one week! I won't be buying much ground beef from now on. I've noticed the same with my money but I have kept an eye on the rising prices of food so I know that is where the majority of the "lost" money is going. It's so bad I've actually thought of creating a "garden area" in my basement with grow lights across the ceiling. That might cause an eyebrow to go up with our electric company and even draw the attention of the Narcotics police but all they'd find would be vegetables. That is, if I could successfully get enough of them to grow to be worth the extra cost of the electricity. What I'd love to do, since I have the room, is to have a solarium built outside where the sun would heat it during the day and I'd only have to heat it a little at night. (Bubble wrap is ideal for holding heat in!) Of course, I'm talking about winter use. I'd need some kind of ventilation built in so I'd be able to use it in the summer. But, that's just a dream at this point. I don't have the money to have a solarium built. I do have grow lights on shelves built just for my seed starting so I can at least start my veggie garden early to, hopefully, be able to harvest enough to make a substantial dent in my food budget, once it warms up, that is. I save seeds from everything I buy that has seeds, or if I've grown them the year before, I save those seeds for the following year. That way, I don't have to waste money on seeds, even though they are a lot cheaper than the value of the vegetables they grow. Still, every year my garden gets bigger and I add more veggies to it. I've started canning and freezing what I harvest that can't be eaten fresh. I'm hoping to add dehydrating to that list this year (especially now that I've learned how to make and preserve sun dried tomatoes with fresh basil, YUM!). I always grow way more tomatoes than I could possibly eat fresh and make canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce and stewed tomatoes or stewed tomatoes with eggplant. I grow enough blackberries to eat them every day but also have plenty left over to make blackberry jelly, enough for the whole year plus enough to give away to friends and family. I could go on and on but I'm getting waaaay off track here! lol The idea is to save enough money by growing as much of my own food as possible. I know you can't, living in an apartment, but if you have a balcony, you could grow a few plants in large pots. You know what I wish would come back? Bartering. Everyone has something they can offer in exchange for something else they need. With bartering, we don't have to spend money to get things we need except maybe to make the thing we're bartering with. I plan to approach a neighbor of ours as soon as my veggie garden is large enough to have a lot of bartering power and see if they'd exchange some of their eggs and meat for some of my vegetables. Sorry this is so long. Guess I'm bored. lol Maybe it's because it's so COLD outside and everything is so dreary and gray. I have gardening on my mind but, with the temperatures going down to 10 and even below (with wind chills well below zero), it's even hard to THINK about gardening right now. So, I'll just tighten my belt and try to find bargains in the grocery store.

I think t6hat basically I am a frugal person and believe me -many months I would not manage without using my credit card. My pension and money from oart time job is simply not enough but do not like to bother my children are they are in such debt re my surgery. So I try to manage. My son pays most of the bills but I try to help him by paying things so not to bother him for every cent needed to run the house. I really try to keep expenses down but food prices keep raising and this is the problem. I often wonder where did it go?

Oh i sit back and count and allocate my money to paying bills, and that happens every salary day / pay day! =) Haha. I wonder too where all the money go! Even when i have about 1000 peses to start with for the week, and i would only be paying for my transportation, pay for my food (lunch) and sometimes snacks in the afternoon but then money just ran out so fast! =) And yes, like you i have never bought something significant that i can even look at and feel good i have bought that with my money!! =( Ohh how is that!

This has happened to me more times than I would like to admit unfortunately hun. It always seems that one can never just stay even. Some months you may pay a bit extra to get ahead, but then something comes up, you can't pay as much towards it, and before you know it your back to where you started or worse. With 2 kids we usually put groceries ahead of bills if it comes right down to it, but we definitely don't make a habbit out of it. Also we put extra the next time so we are either paid in full or have a bit of credit towards the next bill. Some months seem to be worse than others. With birthdays, holidays, and whatever else "life" decides to throw at you it can really be a huge struggle at times.

The total amount looks fine but it goes down steadily with all the direct debits and one standing order. My mortgage is my largest expense I have in the month. I have that on the tenth day of the month so I can see if there is enough in the bank account to pay that amount of money. The utilities add up considerably. They are gas and electricity, telephone and Internet, water, Sky television and TV license. In addition I have to have insurance for my car and home. Food and drinks are expensive which is worrying. I live with a budget and I broke it with paying for my car repairs. I needed my car to pass the MOT and it had lots wrong with it. Good luck with your finances Ambie Pam.

I get this way sometimes too AmbiePam....I think it sometimes is a fact of life....I too like to make sure my bills are payed sometimes i can't always pay in full it seems with me sometimes when i get caught up on good pay periods i fall equally back behind again.....Seems when we see the green it disappears just as fast....Have a great day

Oh all the time. I get annoyed but I have no choice. Bills have to be paid even when there's little to nothing left over. I am glad these past few years my sister has helped with paying the bills even though she does sit back, too, and wonder where all the money worth one week of work went.

Never. I do a budget about every other month. I calculate out everything I buy, ever dollar I spend, and how much I earn, so I know exactly where my month is going. I absolutely hate doing this. It is the most boring, tedious thing I do. However... it is absolutely required. I learned two things about 5 years ago. First, if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. That's true of your money too. Second, if you don't control where your money goes, someone else will. If I don't pay attention to where my money is going, and aim for a fiscal target, I won't have any money, and I won't know why. So I gotta do a budget, at least once every two months. Takes about 2 hours normally, but it has gotten a bit easier over time. Still is a pain in the butt, but then it's far better than being broke, which is what I was before.

I know how that is. I'm in the same boat. I work on my writing to bring in extra money. This month I'm earning better than all other months due to twitter. I never have any money left. It's very upsetting.

i don't like to have a headache.. i don't like to lose my sanity... so i don't really figure out where is my money. I consume so I pay. I eat so I pay... if I will sit and think about everything and my money I will be insane after a few months. I know that my my salary is not sufficient.. so I tend to do some extras, like tutorials and here mylot during free time. now I have extra money I am glad and I have something to buy that I won't guilty of, like chips, snacks or any personal stuff. I don't spend too much for clothes too for I have a thought that in my job I will be transferring from one place to another and having too many of everything will just make it difficult for me to move. don't think about why money is vanishing.. that's the reason why we work.. so we will have money to spend.

Every month. It seems like it goes faster now than ever before. Prices are up on everything and no matter how hard I squeeze that penny, it still disappears before I want it to. I don't buy anything that isn't necessary. All I do is pay my bills and buy groceries and the money is gone. I have sat and stared at my bank statement and tried to remember if I bought something I shouldn't have at the grocery store, but there just isn't as much left as I think there should be.

All of the time lately! For awhile there I was doing really well on all my bills and I was spending money on pretty much whatever I wanted and it was no big deal. Now that I am making less money though? I feel like I am constantly behind on bills. I will be getting my tax money soon to catch up though, so I will be good in about a month.

Every Saturday. We get the money on Friday, it's gone by Saturday. Sometimes even before that. This past Friday we got a nice bonus. After catching up on the rest of this month's bills and getting my car fixed, we were planning on putting a bit towards next month's power bill as somehow that is $600 although it was half that last month! However, we paid this month's bills, got my car fixed, got our groceries, we did buy food Saturday night.. now we've got like $30 left..

In November and December I saw it on my bank statement, LOL, these were small sums adding up and I thought aha, thats where all the money went. It was no real problem as we get a bonus in December and I used most of this too. Just interesting to see how these small bills added up to quite a sum.......

It happens to all of us sometimes we get so much busy with life that we ignore the inflation rate when you get a bill for example electricity you see the bill and say this time its more than the last time but you don't realize that its upsetting your budget as your salary is the same for most of the year but the inflation increases every month thats what i realized what say,.......

electricity and water bill is the thing i usually try to get it in fix lower by reduce the consumption, my pocket money is $100 a month. anything more than that i going to broke......