April Moneys

April is gone, and the results are in.

Incomewise, April was not nearly as good as March, but still not bad.

QFC:        $1,112
Domino's:    $872
Tips:           $881

Total:        $2,866

I always try to shoot for at least $1,980* which is my self-set minimum goal. All the extra counts, because it gets either saved or "invested"**.
*Yes, I know I already posted that my budget is only $1,800. I put away 10% of that amount for "purposes". I'll talk about it later, I'm sure.
**I don't have any investments in the normal sense. No stock, no bonds, no gold, etc. My plan for generating enough passive income to retire is to purchase real estate, to which end, I'm saving up for a down payment, which I should be able to do by next year, so I don't really want my money tied up in anything long-term for now. I consider the money/time/labour that I put into remodeling our current home an "investment" in making it into a profitable rental.

Spending was okay, I guess. I feel like we could have done better in some areas, and we did pretty good in others. Overall we were within the budget, so that's good. Some highlights:

Property taxes were due this month, so that's $635 that we don't normally have coming out of the bank. It's budgeted for within our $1,800, so there was no surprise there. It's actually much lower this year due to the fact that we asked the county to reassess our house because we felt it was overvalued. The county agreed and now our taxes are lower by about $12/month; $1,270 per year instead of $1,416.

I've been doing really well being miserly with gas in my pizza delivery vehicle, a 1996 Honda Civic hatchback. I actually registered 46.5 mpg last time I filled up. Only had to get gas four times-- once in the family car (1995 Civic), and three in the other. I try to make a tank of gas stretch at least a whole week of pizza delivery and commuting. Spent $137 on gas altogether. We're hoping to do a couple short trips over the summer, so I'm trying to make sure there's room in the budget for that.

We didn't have to spend anything on diapers, because we super-stocked up last month when Costco had a $5 off coupon. I hope we have enough to last 'til next time that coupon comes out. I think they alternate months.

It's been starting to get nicely warm, so our power bill is starting to drop, which is really nice. That budget account was $66 negative by the end of April, due to all the heating usage during the winter months. I'm looking forward to seeing it build up a positive balance over the summer.

We also spent $166 on stuff for our current remodeling project, which is the dining room. I consider this an investment in eventually being able to rent this house, so it's not part of the budget. In other news, the walls are drywalled and painted and it's starting to look like a real room instead of a work area. Next stage is the flooring.