this wasn't in the plan |but life is still pretty good

I'm confused. Either we earned quite a bit more than we spent this past month (according to Quicken), or we spent seventy-five cents more than we earned (according to my spreadsheet). It is a bit more time-consuming to use two methods, but they both offer features that I like and, well, it works for us. Normally they both show the same numbers at the end of the month (or off by just a bit), but this is just weird. April was full of irregular expenses - we paid attorney's fees for our wills, paid my first year's life insurance premium, and state income tax - so I'm pretty excited about either outcome. I love that we have the money for those big expenses without pulling from one of our savings accounts. Our savings has been holding pretty steady these past two months due to several irregular expenses popping up. I was hopeful that things would settle down for May, but it isn't looking that way.

As for groceries, I normally shop on Tuesday or Wednesday and April had five of each, thus I made five trips to the store, thus my budget reflected that. I went over by $25, and spread over 5 weeks, that isn't so bad. I did a lot of stocking up - I bought 16 boxes of cereal all for less than a dollar each thanks to a fabulous sale paired with coupons. I bought close to 50 cans of tomato sauce, around two dozen cans of cream of chicken soup, and ten pounds of shredded cheese (for the freezer). And don't forget the cake mixes, oh and goldfish too, lots of goldfish. So, the theory is that by spending a bit more this month and stocking up will allow me to spend less over the next few months. Here's hoping.