Daily Spending and Saving in 2016

Daily Spending and Saving in 2016

Several people have suggested putting a certain amount of money in savings every single day, aim to spend less than a certain amount of money on any given day, etc. On a day to day basis, I don’t do well with that. I save in monthly spurts. But I liked the idea of tracking how much I spent and saved on a daily basis. Here are our 2016 expenses broken down into daily spending amounts in each category:

Daily Spending and Savings 2016

My Thoughts on our Daily Spending and Savings Rates:

  • I like that our transportation costs are a nice even $5.00/day. It seems a bit high, but nice and even.
  • After calculating how much our breakfast costs on a daily basis, it was interesting to see that we spent less than $20/day for our family of 5 to eat (and for 2016, that includes Mr.T and I eating out in the UK for 3 weeks!).
  • $7.67 on household expenses and stuff is lame. This includes toilet paper, haircuts (for Mr.T… I make him cut my hair), gifts for family members, etc. I wish I could say it was mostly gifts, but it’s not. I would like to cut this down. This category brings me very little joy, but is a necessity (we’re not going to go without toilet paper thankyouverymuch!).
  • $4.30/day on utilities is awesome. Our energy updates have really paid off! And it’s nice to see a daily total for this because in the summer, we pay hardly anything, and in the winter when it’s both dark and cold, our bills are way higher.
  • $7/day for internet/cell phones… blerg. I’ve cut our cell phone package down, so maybe we can get this around $6/day, but our internet is over $100/month and there’s nothing we can do about that if we want internet (which we do). Now, every time I sit down to work, I’ll think: “The first $7 I earn today will have to pay for the internet I use to work.”
  • Can you find a place to stay in Anchorage for less than $51/night? Not a chance! Makes me feel better about my mortgage when I think about it in those terms. Though I think it would be way more awesome to pay less than $25/day for housing. Add in our extra mortgage payments, and we paid over $100/day just to sleep here!
  • Travel – If someone said: “If you pay $20/day, you could take several vacations this year including a 3 week trip to the UK,” would you sign up? Yes. Yes, I would. Our vacations are definitely worth $20/day and we’re paying less than that!
  • $6.66 medical expenses – definitely evil!
  • $56.85 daily savings rate seems pretty good. More than our mortgage! Let’s see if we can get this up to at least $60/day in 2017!

Even though I don’t actually evenly spend or save these amounts on a daily basis, breaking spending and savings down into daily amounts really changes perspective. It takes the “latte effect” and turns it into things like “the daily internet cost effect.” It makes you value how much you would actually enjoy turning that amount over every single day to get the same results of your current spending. I’m mostly pretty happy with those amounts, though there’s definitely room for improvement.

Have you calculated your daily spending/savings rates? What surprises you the most?

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10 Comments

  1. This is how I always think about money. It’s weird to me when people say they are going on spending fasts or no-spend weeks/months. I mean, I understand what they’re saying. Basically, they’re not spending any extra. But you’re still spending on your home, your groceries, etc., etc., unless there’s some kind of sorcery that I don’t know about.

    Thanks for sharing the breakdown, Maggie! Neat peek at numbers.

    • MaggieBanks

      You’re way ahead of us all by thinking abuot things this way! This was a bit mind-blowing for me…

  2. Matt @ Optimize Your Life

    This is a really cool breakdown. I may have to try this with my own expenses and see what it looks like.

    Also, nice work on having donations be your second-highest spending category. That’s really awesome.

  3. Breaking down expenses on a daily basis really puts things into perspective. This is a great way to see whether or not you are making the best use of your goods and services. So neat.

  4. This is my absolute favorite way to look at expenses! And also, CONGRATS on the investments and savings category. That is seriously #goals.

  5. Lisa

    I’ve just begun tracking our monthly expenses, and now that you’ve put it this way – daily – I’m really curious as to how outs will play out.

    I wish I would have been doing this for years. When the kids were younger, we lived on less, now one is out of the house, the other is home, but in college, and I feel we spend more. It would have been interesting to see the changes over time. Thanks for sharing yours!

    • MaggieBanks

      Time ends up going pretty fast. Before you know it, you’ll have a whole year!

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