My Local Spending: An Updated Account for May

So I decided to give May a full slate of local financial statistics, as I did March and April. Sure, it was an uncharacteristic month in that I spent quite a bit on one-time purchases that were out of the ordinary for me. But one-time purchases do happen, and in any given year, it's thus likely that I might visit a store just the one time. So here is the graph for May:



And here is the map, with sizing of places based on how much I spent at each place:



Golden Pantry and Kroger still manage to eat up a huge chunk of my expenses, but with the bigger purchases at Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and the Shoe Department, things actually look a bit more spread out. What's interesting, however, is what happens when I plot this on a three-month pie chart:



Here, Kroger and Golden Pantry return to prominence. It would likely take some huge expense, like a major car repair, to displace them from the position in which they fall over the long haul. As a result, the map below may in fact be a fairly accurate, though somewhat random, reflection of typical spending.



June would feature some new places, like Sumo, a dessert shop on Broad that I tried out with a friend Monday night. Interesting place--the dessert is made from shavings of ice milk or something like that. Supposedly, it is low in calories, though with all the added syrup and toppings and such, I'm not sure it how low in calories it stays. The folks running the place were kind enough to open up just for us, just as they were closing. I've got to think it's pretty tough for small business owners who ply a trade at something like desserts as opposed to groceries (or even electronics), but then, I guess their profit margins are higher to make up for it.