
How to be Poor and Environmentally Conscious

I hope that you all had a safe haloween and a prosperous October. Mine fared pretty well, with me only going over budget in 2 categories, by a total of less than $15. Here’s the breakdown.
I was $1 over on my fast food, and $12 over on my restaurant budget.
I also realized that I way over allocated for gas last month, which is a relief. I have lowered it from a high of $300 recently to $170. Lets hope it stays here, although I was supposed to have 2 extra days of work that would have resulted in an extra tank of gas that got snowed out, and I didnt need the gas. AWESOME!
I was also able to begin a separate savings account for a home, and have set up automatic funding for that for $50/month! I hope to up the contribution at the start of next year when I will have more free income due to lack of debt.
Well, the month is finally over, and now it’s time to review how I did on my budget for the month of September.
Everything was going great as far as my budget goes until I had car trouble last weekend. You can read about it Here.
That being said, I was able to keep on my budget in every other part, and if I can sell the car soon (as planned) everything will be nice and rosy.
For now, my net worth took a hit and my monthly budget was consumed mostly by car stuff (eek). See the graph below.
All of this is pretty self explanatory as far as categories go, and I only went over in 1 category.
Mortgage & Rent: 375 This amount wont change for a while. It’s for the roof over my head.
Gas: 302 of 320 – I dont like one bit that I have to spend this much per month on fuel. My car gets ~23 miles to the gallon, so Im not wasting, I just have a 50 mile (1 way) commute.
Groceries: 80 of 120: This is just for food used to cook at home
Fees: 62 of 70: Interest on credit cards
Mobile Phone $52 of 52 – Cost I pay to verizon every month
Auto Insurance: 33 of 33 – To keep me safe in accidents
Fast food: 40 of $25 I blew this one, or maybe my fast food budget is too low? I’ll have to look into this for next month. For now, Im thinking of an increase to $35 per month
That’s all she wrote folks. The reason that auto took up 60 some percent was because I had to put the new car on a charge card. As soon as the car sells, pay off the card and rest easy.
This is my first attempt at blogging. I have decided to write this blog because I am very interested in all aspects of sustainability, and would like to share that interest with others.
I have also begun this for other reasons, one of them being that I am a terrible writer, and am hoping that more practice will make my writing better. So to that end, began to think of things that I could write about, and decided to write about sustainability in all aspects of life.
I intend for this blog to cover sustainability in the following areas, but will not let these limit my blog.
– Environmental Sustainability
– Financial Sustainability
– Mental Sustainability
– Personal Health
I am expecting that there will be plenty of things for me to discuss in these topics, and will also be answering questions by email at [email protected]