January spending recap

Alright, here's the January spending recap. High level summary - our planned spending for the month was $15,550 (includes our mortgage on our rental property), but we actually spent $16,750. Where were we over? I ended up booking a summer camp last week (I know - summer camp?!!) because the boys friends all planned for & registered for a camp that's hard to get into. Cost of the camp? $1240. Without the camp, we would have been right on the money. Here's the breakdown of what went well, and what didn't go as well. I'm also only tracking monthly expenses in the monthly report, but I need to figure out how to report on yearly spending categories. Maybe those make sense quarterly instead?

Highlights:

• $30 under. We spent less than expected on cleaning, as our cleaning lady went on vacation. We had nothing to do with this, but we did clean the house, & are considering cutting the cleaning lady back. The boys could use more responsibility week over week. ;-) 
• $50 under. We spent nothing on liquor - we were well stocked going into the month. 
• $25 under. Toiletries - we spent nothing. Woohoo! This was a challenge, but I stuck to it by taking an inventory & reminding myself that we really didn't need anything in January.
• $640 under. Seattle house mortgage. M pays this bill (we both cover separate expenses), so when I dug in, the average that I was using in 2014 was based on the assumption that we would make additional principal payments on this house. In reality, our goal is now to hoard that remaining cash so we can figure out our future housing situation in California. 

Lowlights:

• $1130 over. Childcare. We actually had less in planned expenses with our nanny, but the summer camp cost outweighed that. 
• $34 over. Dining out. M & I ended up not being able to get into a restaurant as planned, and the only option was a more expensive place. 
• $27 over. Entertainment. I took the boys to the movies, and ended up not being able to use a Groupon during our planned days off. What a ripoff of a Groupon! (vent over)
• $122 over. Groceries. We took team snacks four times this month to various events, and we seemed to be out of everything in the freezer. We really, really need to keep this a bit more in check.
• $150 over. Overpayment on our vacation house mortgage. 
• $540 over. I forgot that our yearly maintenance service was due in January. It's factored into our monthly average, but doesn't account for a one month spike. Also, it was colder in January than it's been since we've moved to California, so we used more power to heat the house. As a result, our utilities were up significantly.

All that said, it was a huge earning month for us. We had our regular checks, our income from our Seattle house (still not net cash flow positive, but not ready to sell - we think we're close in the next year or so, and now is not the right time to sell that house), I received a holiday bonus due to some unexpected working over Christmas, Christmas Eve, New Years, New Year's Eve, and all manners of days inbetween. I also received my yearly bonus. I primarily used my yearly bonus to max out my 401K. After all deductions, our income for January was $50,400. This is an abnormal month for us, of course, and all money is now put into the right accounts for safekeeping. ;-) 

Questions for you. . .how did you do on January spending? Any plans to improve/reduce? If you have both monthly & yearly categories, how do you track the yearly categories regularly?