I'm beginning to realize there is a lot of information at my fingertips that I have yet to fully take advantage of. I really hadn't played with MS Money's reporting feature too much in the past but I spent some time looking at one report and it looks like it will make it a lot easier to come up with a budget. The Spending by Category report! The one thing I am very particular about is making sure the information is in Money and making sure it's assigned to a category that makes it easy for me to relate to (if Money doesn't have the category I create it.) This report wouldn't be half as useful as it turned out to be if I didn't have the categories assigned to the transactions (memo to self: continue to be diligent!) I looked at a year-to-date (around 2 months) to get a satisfactory baseline and here are the scary numbers in order of spending:

1. Mortgage Interest Payments ran away with first place but obviously that's not too disheartening.

2. Utilities came in second. That's ok though since I pay our gas bill when they fill our tank (I have propane heat with a tank buried in the ground.) We actually went from 6/24/06 to 2/8/07 and had the tank filled for just under $1100 so it works out to about $137/mo which around here isn't too bad. I have a bill in Money to put away $150/mo for when I have to make this payment (and this time I have a little left over to keep for the next fill!) Other utilities include:

-Cable $155/mo (yes I know...but we do get our money's worth)

-Electric $200/mo (this was around $220 the last couple of months but I just got this month's bill (due the ides of March) and it's $160 so that's a beautiful thing.

-Water/Sewer: $120 paid quarterly

-Garbage: $75 paid quarterly

Cell Phones for us and the kids, our home phone and high-speed internet are paid by the company so that does save us a lot BUT our utils have to be budgeted for $570/mo. It always looks so much worse when you look at it as one big lump sum but it's a reality check and something we desperately needed to see! I had a personal Cingular account that I cancelled a few weeks back so that saves us $100/mo and I have a plan to sell the 8125 on Ebay so hopefully that gives us a little income boost! I also had duplicated a payment to the electric company in Money (one was auto-downloaded and one was manually entered and I failed to combine them...oops) so I now have an extra $211 in my checking account I thought I didn't have (and that will go right to them for this month's payment!)
I can actually say this blog is making me money!

3. Finance Charges came in third. I have to say that again to ground myself. FINANCE CHARGES CAME IN THIRD!!! Ack! In two months the CC companies collected $1800 in finance charges. $900/mo! What the heck?!! Well at least I have a debt reduction plan that if I can stick to it I will be out of this nightmare in about 2 years and 3 months. You can refer to my first blog post to get the skinny on the current ugliness. I have to keep the mortgage refi in March of 08 in mind so I'm attacking high interest debt AND high utilization at the same time. I made a $2500 payment on a Chase card that had a 17.23 APR and a $5900 balance with a $7300 limit and it felt good to cut it down like that! The card has been one of our best for rewards but Chase will not budge on the APR so I'm looking to pay it off FAST (being well ahead on the mortgage has afforded us the opportunity to do that.) Ugh...$900/mo! Crazy.

4. In 4th place: Household expenses which include $265/mo for house cleaning service (2 times a month), $172 for snow removal (it's $86 per removal) $95 for dry cleaning (not a monthly charge...more of a quarterly charge...I'll end up budgeting $50/mo I think...it's all the wife's stuff as I can wear sweaters and jeans to work) and a group of retail charges at places like Amazon, Target, Pottery Barn, etc. The same company that does our snow removal/salting also does our lawn cutting/maintenance so I'm planning on coming up with a monthly budget for them year-round.

5. Fifth place: Groceries! $668/mo! There has to be a way to chop that down. I need to sit down with the wife and go over this together. I'm hoping to get it down to $100/wk but we'll see if it's possible.

6. We get into Income Tax and Escrow payments before another tangible category: Clothing. $350/mo! That will end immediately. These aren't needed purchases...these are teenagers want purchases. I'm going to try to cut that down as much as possible. We have too many clothes as is.

It does get better after the clothing category but it's still interesting to see the numbers staring right back at you. There is a lot of work to do in this household that's for sure. I have some ideas swirling around in my head but if you want to throw out some suggestions I will certainly appreciate them all. Thanks to everyone here as I'm really on a roll to get us on the right track!