Redefining my tracking of expenses

One of my goals for the year was to track my spending. Then I realized I've been tracking the wrong thing. Sure, it's nice to know that I'm spending approximately what I arbitrarily said I'd be spending in food, personal and gas, it's still not telling me the story I wanted to hear.

I wanted to track what happened to the money that didn't make it to one of those categories, or to already-assigned savings/debt repayment goals. This means mostly my PT job's earnings.

So far, I've gotten about $355 extra money since March started, and I've spent $230 at my parents'. Good news is, not all was lost. I also sent $100 to my IRA (go me!), and managed to salvage around about $65 to a random savings fund I'd like to become my car fund, which I still have not even started. If you followed my math there, I spent $40 over my allowance. That money probably came from my own grocery budgets. All in all, I think I'll be changing how I look at my spending.

Though my extra money hasn't done the impact I'd like it to see, I've still been making all of my pre-arranged payments (including sending $565 to SL1). I think I'm doing pretty good, but still could do better. Budgets are great in that you can always tweak them and use them different, even if they are set on paper.