Income & Expenses For January 2015

Since 2014, I have been tracking my monthly income and expenses. You can see a breakdown of every penny I earn and spend. For perspective, this budget is for a household of two in a small US city. By documenting my journey, I aim to demonstrate the feasibility of saving a significant portion of your income and provide some ideas and inspirations for your own budget.

Below is my income and expenses for January 2015. You can see all my monthly budgets here.

	Jan 2015
Income
Wages	$8,422.47
Dividends	$452.88
Other Income	$48.13
Amazon sale	$6.86
Ebay sale	$31.71
Total Income	$8,962.05
Expense
Federal Tax	$355.56
FICA-SS	$356.13
FICA-Medicare	$83.29
Rent	$450.00
Student loan repayment	$157.49
Grocery	$84.92
Cell phone	$17.92
Electric	$47.09
Clothing/laundry	$14.50
Amazon sale costs	$0.69
Ebay fee	$6.76
Total Expense	$1,574.35
Ex-Tax Total Expense	$779.37
Surplus/(Deficit)	$7,387.70
Before Tax Saving Rate	82.43%
After Tax Saving Rate	90.46%

Income

Dividend income tends to be low for me in January, though it is an 85% increase from January a year ago. Here is a chart of my dividend income by month for the last 13 months:

Expense
Expenses were standard for me in January, with no  extraordinary expense items. All expenses are more or less what I would expect going forward. I am proud of keeping food expenses under $100 for a family of two. 

Savings
My after tax saving rate was 90.46% for the month of January, which is pretty good. My monthly savings rate for the trailing 13 months is shown below. My goal is to save 90% of my after-tax income. January has been a good start, and I am on track to meet my savings goal for 2015.

How's your budget? Did you save as much as you wanted to? On track to meet your savings goals for the year? 

Thanks for reading.