January Budget

It rained today, this was expected so we had penciled in a shopping day and some packing for tomorrows 40 mile move to Tucson. We (John), got a late start so we ate brunch, cleaned up and played some indoor ball with KoKo before driving into Benson to do our shopping. When we got back John packed the bicycles while Sandy put away the groceries and we plugged in the Pressure Pro to check all of the tires.

We wanted to touch on our budget as Sandy paid our bills for January and we were able to look at our line items and see how we did. The bottom line looked good as we were under budget by $266.68. The areas where we were over or under budget are understandable and explainable.

The largest overage was $455.22  in the Miscellaneous category as that is where we put the CRV repairs. The largest overage after Miscellaneous was $47.35 for our Air Card, this was over because we purchased it in December and paid part of December and all of January last month; the new cell phone and contract we added in December to replace John’s work phone ran that line over by $21.75 for the same reason. After that the overages really drop off, we went over on diesel fuel because we were pushing to get to the warmer weather and speed costs money (the wind didn’t help either); the other place where we were over was in our KoKo line, we were over because of the grooming she got just before we left.

Now the good news; we were under budget by $172.78 for campground fees even though we only budgeted for the 19 days we were on the road, hopefully this is a trend but we may need the extra $ when we get into California. The other big savings was $144.35 in groceries (all that bologna John ate after the CRV incident) and we were under by $140.48 for gas in the CRV primarily because we haven’t had to do a lot of driving to see the sights yet, that will change and fuel will be more expensive when we get to California. We also saved in entertainment, dinning out and Satellite Television; we were under budget in the latter because we don’t have a satellite system but that will change in Tucson.