The Dollar Challenge: Where I Spend My Dollar

(I know, the formatting is all off, blogger keeps glitching, just bear with me)

I have decided to participate in The Dollar Challenge organized by 20s Finance.  Personal Finance bloggers are invited to compare where they spend their money each month to see how we decide to split up our finances.

Although our budget will be changing drastically next month to make room for baby, this is based on our current budget.

1. Housing  42.2%
Rent  36.9%
A little more than it should be, but really the chances of finding a 2 bedroom apartment/house for less is slim to none.  We were pretty happy that we did manage to find a place this cheap that met our standards.

Utilities  5.3%We got a very good deal from Roger's thanks to the guy on the phone that set up our account.  One of my most pleasant experiences on the phone with a company:)  However it will go up a bit in March.  Our hydro and water tank rental charges were also much lower than we expected which is great!  We'll see how great it is though once we turn on the electric heating.
2. Transportation  0%I love that we pay nothing for transportation.  We don't have a car, and I boycotted our crappy bus system over a year ago.  It's the most expensive in Canada, and has the worst service in Canada.  Who wouldn't boycott that?  We either walk or bike to work as it's not that far, and if we ever need to do errands that require a car we borrow one from our parents.  (We fill it up, but that money will come out of our 'other' money)

3. Food  9%I just boosted our grocery money, because $220 a month isn't enough when you drink as much milk as we do and I'm trying to eat for two.  For November I've set our milk budget aside from the rest of the food just so we remember to go out and buy a bunch of groceries with 10 days left and leave nothing for milk.

4. Insurance  2%This is for our renter's insurance.  I had the option to pay the annual premium upfront but decided to go monthly to work it into our budget, and also in case we do make a claim and it changes I won't have to worry about already having paid for the upcoming months.  We just got our medical and life insurance though work, which we don't pay for (not 100% sure about this yet, we'll see next month I guess) and I also have extra medical coverage under my mom until I'm 25.

5. Personal Care  0%I'm setting this category to 0% because any personal care items we buy we either get with our groceries or with our spending money, which I've put in the entertainment category.

6. Entertainment  3.6%We each have $50 in spending money each month for us to buy whatever we want.  This includes clothes, personal care items, shopping, etc.

7. Savings  36.8%My RRSP  1.8%I put $50 aside each month to my RRSP.  Not much, but I'm only 20 and right now I have bigger things to save for coming up like a down payment and school.  Once we have enough money set aside for these items (or we come into more income) I will boost my RRSP contributions.  However I did put about $2,000 into it when I started it.

Kyle's RRSP  2.9%Kyle puts aside $20 a week to his RRSP, which averages to $80 a month, however two months a year will have a $100 contribution.

Extra Savings  32.1 %Technically this isn't a budgeted account in our budget, it's all the money that's leftover each month after all our other budgeted expenses.  So there's a lot of room to expand our other categories like spending money, but we keep it tight (but liveable) so that we can grow our savings faster.  It's roughly $890 each month, but usually higher than that because we tend to bring in more income that what we have budgeted for.

8. Other  6.4%My cell phone  1.6%I recently switched to a better plan that greatly decreased my bill, although I'm extremely upset with Solo and their super crappy customer service (not to mention their money snatching loop holes, which one call center guy fessed up to).  And as much as I love my phone, it's starting to crap out, so once it dies I think I'll be switching to an iPhone.  Yes, I'm giving in. Sigh.

Kyle's call phone  2.9%Kyle has an iPhone, so of course his bills are much larger than mine, although I've been bugging him to call them to try to negotiate a slightly cheaper plan.  Damn data!

Other  1.8%We use this account for any random but necessary purchases that come up like repairs, medicine, or household objects (plugs, cleaning supplies, etc).