Expenditur​e Tracker - July 2012

Item	July 2012	Target (new)	Over/(Under)	Target (old)	Over/(Under)
Share Investments	+$1,243	+$3,100	-$1,857	+$3,300	-$2,057
Offset Acct.	+$2,151	+$1,300	$851	+$1,600	+$551
Personal expenditure	+$4,623	+$2,000	+$2,623	+$1,500	+$3,123

Last month I re-evaluated and reset my expectations with respect to my expenditure goals because I think I was a bit unrealistic when I had originally set them.  For the next few months I will include both my original goals and new goals and benchmark my performance against both.  Unlike my net worth result for July 2012, my expenditure goals were largely not met (though on an adjusted target basis it was much closer than before I reset my expectations).

Compared to the previous month June had quite a large blow out in personal expenditure.  This was primarily due to the health insurance that I paid in June on my credit card which had to be paid off in July.  I paid a whole year in advance because it saved me a significant amount of money to do this (and I have posted about this before).  In August my credit card bill is less than 50% of my July credit card bill so it should be possible to reign in this expenditure (although I think it will be a challenge to keep it under my target of $2,000 for the month)

I did not invest as much in the stock market as I have been aiming to.  This is because I'm taking the opportunity to take some profits and reallocate funds back into my home loan offset account.  The amount I did invest was through my employee share investment plan.  I will continue to invest through this on an ongoing basis (although this month I will be selling 6 months worth of shares which are due to vest).  In August I plan on doing some more profit taking although I am looking for other opportunities in the share market to deploy my capital.

The table below outlines my performance on a cumulative basis.  Note that this once again includes both a pre and post resetting of expectations table (note that the new cumulative table only runs from July 2012 which is the first month of reset expectations).  I find that looking at a cumulative table helps keep my mind focused on what my overall goals are.  For example I have under-invested in equities this month but since January I have actually over-invested in them so I am comfortable with this under-investment.

Item	Jul 12 - Jul 12	Target (new)	Over/(Under)	Jan 12 - Jul 12	Target (old)	Over/(Under)
Share Investments	+$1,243	+$3,100	-$1,857	+$26,052	+$23,100	+$2,952
Offset Acct.	+$2,151	+$1,300	$851	-$3,844	+$11,200	-$15,044
Personal expenditure	+$4,623	+$2,000	+$2,623	+$26,795	+$10,500	+$16,295