Greetings, all.

Here's my annual rundown of the prior year's income and expenses.

Overall, I spent $43,687 in 2022. I earned just $29,689, so I'm in the hole for about $14,000. It's not what I planned, nor wanted, but after a June layoff from my p/t job, a new p/t job failed to deliver the hours I was counting on. In fact, I haven't worked since before Thanksgiving.

I have been half-heartedly looking for a new position, but I really need to get more serious about it. I think I'll be fine if I wind up starting full retirement 2 years early, but I would rather stick to my plan to work a p/t job until I'm 65.

Here are my top 10 expenses, which combined, account for 61% of total expenses. (Note: Among my top 10 expenses are IRS and state income tax payments. I've chosen not to include their breakdown here.)

1. Property taxes: $6,788. No surprise here. The amount hasn't changed much since last year, but they just did a 5-year revaluation, and my home appreciated in value by $75,000. The mil rate will be changing too, so I haven't figured out how big of a tax increase I'm looking at for 2023.

2. Food: $4,731. This increased by $368 compared to last year. It's always in the top quartile of my expenses; looking at my pie chart of top 8 expenses, it's shocking what a huge amount of my budget it consumes.

3. Out of pocket medical/dental: $2,101. This is still a big expense, despite it being so much lower, by $4,100, than last year, because last year I had my knee surgery. I did have some cosmetic things done this year that weren't covered at all by my plan.

4. Cat, $1,815. This was about $156 more than last year. He's eating premium, mail-order cat food these days and is on meds, but this does seem high.

5. Lawn & garden, mowings, $1,217. This is about the same as last year, but my mower did slightly increase his fee at the tail end of this year, so I'll see the full impact in 2023.

6. Heating oil/cleaning, $1,173. This represents a big jump, $578 more than last year due to rising energy costs.

7. Electric, $1,104. This was a bit more than last year, by $122. The 2 standard offer suppliers in my state have really caused an outcry after raising rates, but I am luckily locked into an alternative supplier at a much better rate until December 2024.

8. Clothing, $1,029. This was about the same as I spent in 2021.

Taking a look at what categories saw an increase OR decrease OR stayed about the same, I can see:

Categories with increased costs = $2,420 across 11 categories
(Food, cat, heating oil, electricity, gasoline, entertainment, car insurance, car maintenance, homeowners insurance, dining out and my umbrella policy)

Categories where my spending stayed about the same as last year: 8 categories (property taxes, lawn & garden/mowings, internet, water, borough taxes, dump sticker, haircuts).

Categories where my spending fell = $6,932 across 9 categories
(Out of pocket medical/dental, clothing, "household" (my one catch-all category where I tend to dump expenses that don't fit somewhere else, usually stuff for the home), health insurance, gifts, home maintenance, landline)