Friday, January 05, 2007

2006 Income and Expenses

As I mentioned in the last post, (before I started getting all confused about myself!) my total inflows for 2006 were $123,038.24. But the most important part of that, of course, is my actual salary and my annual bonus. Salary came to $85,575.37 and bonus was $9,464.00 for a total of $95,039.37. Maybe next year it will get into 6 figures, which will feel like quite a milestone!

Then there were those outflows of $118,386.19. Let's break those down:
Home-buying expenses: $56,467.96
This covers part of the downpayment, all closing costs, and moving costs, and monthly housing costs through the end of December, as well as miscellaneous hardware supplies for minor improvements and painting.
The next biggest item is payroll taxes: $28,164.39
Then we get into the expenses I can control a bit more:
Dining: $8,687.27 (you would think from that number that I am the size of a barn, but I swear I'm not! This may be the only part of my budget where I can actually say "I don't know where it all goes!")
Rent: $7,100 (from before I moved)
Household: $4,019.04 (About $2,900 of this was for furniture for the new home)
Travel: $3,242.04
Miscellaneous: $1,741.55 (includes haircuts, accountant's fee and other odds & ends)
Medical: $1,472.04
Gym/Fitness: $1,251.00 (mostly my gym membership, plus some misc. items)
Telephone: $1,239.26
Gifts: $1,058.06
Clothing: $935.97 (This is low because I joined a nudist camp and spend all my weekends there. The membership fee is on a different budget line. Oh, only kidding!)
Subscriptions: $899.97 (NYT, magazines and internet access)
Entertainment: $652.85
Those are the most notable categories. Everything else, which includes insurance, education, and charity, totalled $1,459. (I "owe" charitable donations of a few hundred dollars, which I flaked out about actually doing before the end of the year. I need to order another water buffalo, my great-aunt loved hers!)

So if I hadn't bought the condo, discretionary expenses would have totalled about $32,296, vs. after-tax/after-deduction paycheck cash of about $49,882. So I lived on about 2/3 of my take-home pay, while saving $17,586 out of my paychecks, plus $15,000 that was deducted for my 401K before taxes, for total savings of $32,586. All of which I then proceeded to blow on a condo, which kind of allowed me to more or less feel like I hadn't spent it at all!

I feel pretty good about these savings... but were they what I had budgeted to save? Did I actually overspend? Am I on track for long term goals like retirement? Still stringing you along for future posts, folks!


Anonymous said...

Dear Madame X:
I've been reading your post for a while and I love not only its practicalness but the smooth prose. Two things I've always been wondering about are: 1. How do you keep your spending record down to the cent esp. for the cash spending? 2. Through what ways did you gain so much financial knowledge having gone through a what I assume was a mostly liberal arts education?
Thank you very much!!

fin_indie said...

Love the clothing expense line -- Too funny. I need to show that to my wife. <$1000 on clothes per year? What a dream!! :)

Pink Chick said...

Wow, you payed more in payroll taxes than I made this year!!! It's like, reverse sticker shock!!

I enjoy reading your blog!! This was a great post. :)

Eddie said...

I think for your salary level, your net worth is kind of low. Of course, since you are single, I wouldn't expect your net worth to be as high as if you were married. Having said that, I think you can cut back on eating out, subscriptions, telephone and others, I am sure.

You should be able to live off of half your paycheck. I realize NY is an expensive place to live, but no matter where you live, half your salary is a good benchmark.

Reality Bytes said...

I am curious as to how much you spend on books? Which category?