After taking the last few months off from budgeting I decided that with only a few months left of work I needed to buckle down and get back into saving as much money as possible. My goal is to save $20,000 by the time I leave for my travels - which is no small feat in a year and a half on my salary - so keeping track is going to be essential.

That means I need to keep a strict budget and once again be mindful of where I’m spending my money and how often. Extraneous expenses need to be kept to a minimum but I also need to be mindful to not get caught up in budgeting. I obviously want to save as much as possible, but I need to make sure I still am enjoying my life and spending money on myself and doing things with my friends.

So here’s my travel budget breakdown for the month of March! The first column is all my categories, the second column is my budget, and the third column shows how much I actually spent in each category. If it’s highlighted green I stayed in budget, red I went over. Not too bad! Plus I was able to transfer over an additional $150 to my travel account at the end of this month for a total savings of $800.