Financial Forensics

One of my goals (NOT resolutions) in the New Year was to do a financial forensic analysis on how we spent our money in 2011. This results in going through every transaction involving our joint checking account, our joint credit card, my checking account, and my credit card and then categorizing it. This excludes my husband's personal expenses. He will tell you that I take the vast majority of his paychecks for nefarious "joint expenses."  He doesn't have much left, and what he does have left it's just easier if I don't know what he does with it. Well, I know he spends some of it on filling his gas tank, some on eating out for lunch (probably more than I would like), electronics, his tae kwon do, gorgeous jewelry gifts for me (ha! I mean, I wish!), and the rest on lap dances, poker & cigarettes. If you knew my husband, you'd probably think the latter set of items is unlikely.

So here are the numbers. I'm going to do a post on my other blog that I will sometime link to via FB about my comments on this. Keep in mind that we don't have a "savings" item on here. I only looked at actual expenses and not transfers between accounts because I might act like a day trader with my transfers among accounts. I could not reconstruct them. We do save other than for retirement, but it's a nebulous amount, especially after we have moved into this house and save for big projects and then pay for big projects. Our new roof isn't included in this because, well, we already had the money saved in an account earmarked for it. However, our new furnace is included because we saved up for that in 2011, using 2011 money.

2011 Financial Forensics Includes Joint Expenses and My Personal Expenses  38.2% Retirement 27.2% Mortgage + extra principal paid 7.8% Daycare 6.1% Property taxes 4.5% Food - groceries (may include some household) 3.9% Home improvement 1.7% City of T-town (water, electric, sewer, garbage all billed together) 1.3% Car insurance - both cars 1.1% AT&T 1.1% Home Insurance 1.0% Gifts/charity 1.0% B gas for car (S pays out of his own account) 0.9% PSE (heat, hot water) 0.8% Household "stuff" (includes unspecific Target line items) 0.7% Medical (B & J, excludes S out of pocket) 0.7% Eating out (joint + B personal, excludes S personal) 0.5% B clothes 0.4% Recreation/entertainment 0.3% Internet 0.3% HOA 0.2% Cable 0.1% J clothes 0.1% Car maintenance/tabs (B only) 0.1% Netflix 0.1% Personal Care - B (hair cuts, massages, pedicures) 100.0% Grand Total Expenses for 2011 (Minus S personal)