March Monthly Totals

I have been keeping track of how much money I spend on groceries, toiletries, health & beauty products and cleaning supplies. I have never been really good about keeping track before, I just always tried to be frugal. I went into my Microsoft Money program where I keep my spending information and ran some reports to try to see how much money we used to spend on these areas. The data isn't super accurate but I figured we used to spend on average around $600-$700 per month on these products which included a little bit of stocking up but not much. As I have been learning how to live more frugally and save money I have been much better about tracking these things. I am now keeping a spreadsheet of all these types of purchases, how much I have spent and how much I have saved. My totals for this month are as follows:

Spent $364.73* on a total of $1,811 in products. Not bad! It's like getting $1,500 in free products in one month. No wonder my storage areas are starting to run out of open space! My goal for April is to be well under the $300 mark. This month was higher then I would like to normally fall mostly because I am doing some mega stocking up. I think from now on out I will be doing less stocking up since I am so well stocked in many areas. I am putting these numbers here on my blog to help keep me accountable and to help me stick to my goals.

* I went back in and figured how much of this was pure "groceries" and it worked out to be about $230. Pretty good for a family of 5!