End of Year Expense Report

[Note: If you're not into data, you should probably stop reading now, as the boredom inspired by this post will make you want to pour liquid hot magma on your face]

As some of you know, I keep stupidly meticulous records of everything I spend money on.  This is partly because I hope to gain some insight into, and adjust accordingly, my spending habits.  But, mostly, it's because I kind of love data.  And data about oneself is even more interesting because it serves the same function as art or conversation - just another avenue to understand a part of yourself.  

This love of self-data manifests itself in many ways - I've contemplated making a map of the U.S. with every road I've ever driven on marked.  ["Contemplated" might be too strong a word.  I thought about it and immediately realized it was stupendously impossible].  I often wish I knew other statistics about myself, like how much money in total has been invested in me ever (including food for my almost 24 years of existence, college tuition, a rough estimate of my share of my family's housing, gasoline to transport me, etc. etc.; i.e. how much I cost?); or how many hours of TV I've ever watched, or total pages of books I've read.

While I don't have those stats, I do have a record of everything I spent money on in the last year.  The most hilarious year-end line item, and the one my mother will be least pleased to hear of, is that 5% of my expenses were Alcohol in 2008 (you're welcome, 4th Ave Pub!).  Here are the other line items as a percentage of my total expenses for the year:

2008 Total

However, these percentages were somewhat influenced by the fact that I moved during the last third of the year, which inflated Home Improvement (buying a new bed, new desk, etc.), Clothes (it's chilly out here!), Travel, and Miscellaneous (random moving expenses).  The following percentages (from the first 7 months of the year) are probably more typical.

2008 (Jan-July)

Yeah, I'd say Home Improvement is about at Lion's Den levels in that second chart.