October Financial Rundown

Thus far this month: $325 on groceries - this is about what it always is.  I might spend another $25 this weekend, so we'll say $350 for the entire month.  I find it difficult to get under $300 without a huge amount of coupon clipping and running around.  I don't mind coupon clipping if I have a newspaper.  But I object to going through a zillion hoops and entering your e-mail everywhere and liking stuff on Facebook just to get $1 off.  Yes, I'm lazy.  We spent $33 on dining out this month.  So $380ish total on food.  Eh, not too bad.

Let's see, I did that Bill Pay experiment with our City utility bill.  I didn't really like that.  I paid it on 10/8 through my bank's Bill Pay (money comes out right away from your checking account), and it didn't get credited at the utility company until 10/14.  I don't like giving Chase that kind of float to earn interest on my money.  And I felt like I had to babysit the transaction.

We had been signed up for auto debit for our three main utility accounts.  We still are, but I made online accounts at the three utilities and did a sample payment by ACH at each one.  All three of those went seamlessly.  Even though it's a pain to have yet another login, I think I like this method of payment the best.  What is really nice is that I can pay a flat amount of whatever I want at anytime, so I have a credit right now at the gas company and with the City.  And with AT&T.  I like that control.

Yay for paying online at each utility website!  Nay for Bill Pay!  If Bill Pay works for you, that's great.  I can see that it is easier than logging in to each of your accounts individually.  I suppose I don't have that much faith in the Bill Pay process, however, and I don't really like Chase getting the float.  As a matter of personal preference, I don't think I'll do many more Bill Pay transactions.

We refinanced this month.  I'm still waiting to get my Welcome Packet in the mail from the credit union so I can login there and make ACH payments on their website.  I wanna be welcomed (and get access)!!! 

All told, it was a good financial month.  I had predicted that this month would be tight.  It wasn't as tight as I expected, but thankfully nothing unexpected happened, and we ended up not needing to bring cash to closing.  That was nice.

November is a light expense month.  We won't be getting our biggest utility bill, as that bill is every other month.  No mortgage payment since we refinanced.  And I paid ahead on most of the other utility bills with my ACH experiments at each of their websites.  Oh yeah, and I already paid for November and December daycare.  Sooooo, we really only have to pay for food and other miscelleneous spending.  This hopefully will give us some padding for December expenses. Not that Christmas should be that expensive, but it's more that those annual bills hit us in December.