Our November 2017 Budget

November closed and in the books! Last time we shared our budget summary it was a mid-month look. Now we are sharing our budget as of the end of a month to give you a better idea of how our budget is managed. As mentioned before, most of our category amounts roll over month to month (unused or overused). Rolling amounts allows us a little more flexibility to save up for things that we want to purchase at some point in the future, and handle variable or infrequent expenses like utilities or car repairs.

Category	Monthly Budget	Amount left
Tithes/Charity	750	47
Rent	1150	0
Electric	65	68
Water	40	103
Gas	70	33
Phone	10	4
Internet	35	-5
Groceries	230	10
Restaurants	120	89
Clothing	60	184
Cleaning/Laundry	10	132
Gas & Travel Expenses	135	-64
Repairs & Tires	120	185
Car Replacement	70	1480
Other Medical	80	-335
Entertainment	70	105
Vacation	70	50
Auto Insurance	167	0
Toiletries	10	68
Cosmetics/Hair Care	15	25
Gifts	140	678
Furniture/ Household	75	285
Tyler Pocket Money	50	27
Nicole Pocket Money	50	181
Nicole Student Loan	197	4
Tyler Private Loan	322	1
Tyler Federal Loan	194	0
Car Loan	1100	0
Miscellaneous	165	122
Fitness	5	288
Baby Things	50	42
Daughter’s Health Insurance	87	0
Water	40	103
Gas	70	33
Daycare	750	10

Yay! We ended the month favorably in most categories. A couple points I’d like to highlight based on our performance this year through November:  First, let’s get the thorns in our side taken care of, Other Medical and Gas & Travel Expenses. As mentioned in our previous post, Other medical is negative because we underestimated our need for the year and ran out of FSA funds earlier than anticipated. We have been hit with more medical expenses for the last few months then we had originally budgeted for. Next is our constant struggle, Gas & Travel Expense. We took a trip out of state to visit family over Thanksgiving so we were obviously putting more gas in our vehicles, but even without that figured in, it is one account we have had difficulty managing appropriately even with some mid year revisions.  Since our current budget software backs up individual transactions we are planning to dig into our spending data in this category to see what we can do to better manage this account in the future.

Some of the areas that we are doing well on have to do with our assumptions starting out. Two areas I’d like to highlight relate to life changes that we experienced in the recent past: utilities and baby expenses. We have been in our house a little over a year now, but coming from a one bedroom apartment we knew things would change, but just not how much. We did our best to estimate our need for the year and turns out our budget in our utilities category was greater than our need. Same can be said of our Baby Things category. With our daughter is coming up on 1.5 years we are still relatively new to this whole parenting and keeping another little human alive thing. As a result we budgeted a little higher than we actually have used so far.

With most things in our budget, we would prefer to have at least a little wiggle room for the unexpected. We do not try to budget so carefully so that every single dollar we have will be spent in a given month; we have several categories that serve as mini savings accounts (clothing, repairs & tires, car replacement, vacation, gifts, furniture/household) . We have those accounts so that we have money allocated for bigger ticket items we are saving for or for expenses that can’t necessarily be planned (car or home repairs being prime examples). It’s all about knowing what your financial goals are but not being so hung up on them that you don’t allow yourself any margin for errors (Gas & travel!) or the unexpected (Medical!) that is bound to occur.  

We know our budget isn’t perfect and we have areas we need to understand better so we can budget appropriately for them in the coming months. We also have some sizable financial changes coming up for 2018 so keep an eye out for more posts on how we develop our budget strategy and financial goals for the upcoming year!

budget

Our November 2017 Budget

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

November closed and in the books! Last time we shared our budget summary it was a mid-month look. Now we are sharing our budget as of the end of a month to give you a better idea of how our budget is managed. As mentioned before, most of our category amounts roll over month to month (unused or overused). Rolling amounts allows us a little more flexibility to save up for things that we want to purchase at some point in the future, and handle variable or infrequent expenses like utilities or car repairs.

Category	Monthly Budget	Amount left
Tithes/Charity	750	47
Rent	1150	0
Electric	65	68
Water	40	103
Gas	70	33
Phone	10	4
Internet	35	-5
Groceries	230	10
Restaurants	120	89
Clothing	60	184
Cleaning/Laundry	10	132
Gas & Travel Expenses	135	-64
Repairs & Tires	120	185
Car Replacement	70	1480
Other Medical	80	-335
Entertainment	70	105
Vacation	70	50
Auto Insurance	167	0
Toiletries	10	68
Cosmetics/Hair Care	15	25
Gifts	140	678
Furniture/ Household	75	285
Tyler Pocket Money	50	27
Nicole Pocket Money	50	181
Nicole Student Loan	197	4
Tyler Private Loan	322	1
Tyler Federal Loan	194	0
Car Loan	1100	0
Miscellaneous	165	122
Fitness	5	288
Baby Things	50	42
Daughter’s Health Insurance	87	0
Water	40	103
Gas	70	33
Daycare	750	10

Yay! We ended the month favorably in most categories. A couple points I’d like to highlight based on our performance this year through November:  First, let’s get the thorns in our side taken care of, Other Medical and Gas & Travel Expenses. As mentioned in our previous post, Other medical is negative because we underestimated our need for the year and ran out of FSA funds earlier than anticipated. We have been hit with more medical expenses for the last few months then we had originally budgeted for. Next is our constant struggle, Gas & Travel Expense. We took a trip out of state to visit family over Thanksgiving so we were obviously putting more gas in our vehicles, but even without that figured in, it is one account we have had difficulty managing appropriately even with some mid year revisions.  Since our current budget software backs up individual transactions we are planning to dig into our spending data in this category to see what we can do to better manage this account in the future.

Some of the areas that we are doing well on have to do with our assumptions starting out. Two areas I’d like to highlight relate to life changes that we experienced in the recent past: utilities and baby expenses. We have been in our house a little over a year now, but coming from a one bedroom apartment we knew things would change, but just not how much. We did our best to estimate our need for the year and turns out our budget in our utilities category was greater than our need. Same can be said of our Baby Things category. With our daughter is coming up on 1.5 years we are still relatively new to this whole parenting and keeping another little human alive thing. As a result we budgeted a little higher than we actually have used so far.

With most things in our budget, we would prefer to have at least a little wiggle room for the unexpected. We do not try to budget so carefully so that every single dollar we have will be spent in a given month; we have several categories that serve as mini savings accounts (clothing, repairs & tires, car replacement, vacation, gifts, furniture/household) . We have those accounts so that we have money allocated for bigger ticket items we are saving for or for expenses that can’t necessarily be planned (car or home repairs being prime examples). It’s all about knowing what your financial goals are but not being so hung up on them that you don’t allow yourself any margin for errors (Gas & travel!) or the unexpected (Medical!) that is bound to occur.  

We know our budget isn’t perfect and we have areas we need to understand better so we can budget appropriately for them in the coming months. We also have some sizable financial changes coming up for 2018 so keep an eye out for more posts on how we develop our budget strategy and financial goals for the upcoming year!

Read More

October 2017 Budget, and Free Budgeting Software Coming Soon!

 

Image: Matthew Henry

As a major part of our blog, we want to share exactly how we budget and how we’re doing follow that budget. A lot of other financial material shares vague rules like spending no more than 33% of your income on housing, however many dollars per person per week for groceries, or whatever, but we want to show the actual amounts down to the dollar. For most categories, we roll over unused (or overused) amounts to the next month. This allows us to save responsibly and help account for month-to-month swings in things like gas and groceries.

Category	Monthly Budget	Amount left
Tithes/Charity	750	1573
Rent	1150	1150
Electric	65	144
Phone	10	4
Internet	35	-15
Groceries	230	47
Restaurants	120	103
Clothing	60	124
Cleaning/Laundry	10	127
Gas & Travel Expenses	135	-28
Repairs & Tires	120	100
Car Replacement	70	1410
Other Medical	80	-256
Entertainment	70	148
Vacation	70	-97
Rental Insurance	0	0
Auto Insurance	167	167
Toiletries	10	80
Cosmetics/Hair Care	15	45
Gifts	140	558
Furniture/ Household	75	363
Tyler Pocket Money	50	94
Nicole Pocket Money	50	198
Nicole Student Loan	197	4
Tyler Private Loan	322	1
Tyler Federal Loan	194	-3
Car Loan	1100	0
Miscellaneous	165	229
Fitness	5	303
Baby Things	50	32
Daughter’s Health Insurance	87	87
Water	40	153
Gas	70	48
Daycare	750	565

This is a mid-month look, which is why a few items (like Tithes/Charity, Daycare, and Auto Insurance) have a lot left. A few categories have a  bunch built up, where we’ve been saving for a while. We’re hoping both of our cars will last quite a while, but we’re building up our car replacement fund so that we can buy a car with cash or at least have a very good down payment when we need a new one. For furniture and household, we actually just got a really good deal on some nice living room chairs on Craigslist, so that category is down to around $250 now.

We have a few categories we’re not happy with and need to work on. Our Other Medical category is running low because our FSA ran out earlier than expected this year. Gas and Travel is difficult to pin down. Our families live in another state, so trips to go see them really eat at our budget there. And vacation was built up, but we were just lucky enough to make a trip to a friend’s wedding into a mini-vacation for us and went a little over budget. We try to live conservatively enough that when we do go over we have a cushion in our bank account, and we can keep saving up. We’ll just have to take a little longer to save for our next trip.

Our biggest win in our budget, we think, is the car loan. As I had mentioned before, I was dumb, got too excited, and spent more on a car than I should have. By cutting back other areas, we were able to turn our $200/month car payment into a $1,100/month car payment, and now we should have it paid off in January, about 3 years ahead of schedule. Once that’s done, we’ll roll that entire payment into Nicole’s student loans (our next smallest balance) and start paying that off.

Budgeting is the single most important step to getting your finances where you want them to be. Don’t worry if your budget isn’t perfect the first month! It takes time to see what you spend and make the adjustments you need to make. But once you find the right budget, it keeps you from spending more than you make, and helps you reach your financial goals while still being able to spend money on the things that are important to you.

We know that keeping track of a budget is difficult. That’s why we’re currently working on v3 of our own budgeting software! This is a program that I wrote to help teach myself coding while I was unemployed a few years back, we’re starting from scratch to write a better program than the one we currently use at home. Keep checking back to see when it’s released!

budget

October 2017 Budget, and Free Budgeting Software Coming Soon!

Thursday, November 2, 2017

 

Image: Matthew Henry

As a major part of our blog, we want to share exactly how we budget and how we’re doing follow that budget. A lot of other financial material shares vague rules like spending no more than 33% of your income on housing, however many dollars per person per week for groceries, or whatever, but we want to show the actual amounts down to the dollar. For most categories, we roll over unused (or overused) amounts to the next month. This allows us to save responsibly and help account for month-to-month swings in things like gas and groceries.

Category	Monthly Budget	Amount left
Tithes/Charity	750	1573
Rent	1150	1150
Electric	65	144
Phone	10	4
Internet	35	-15
Groceries	230	47
Restaurants	120	103
Clothing	60	124
Cleaning/Laundry	10	127
Gas & Travel Expenses	135	-28
Repairs & Tires	120	100
Car Replacement	70	1410
Other Medical	80	-256
Entertainment	70	148
Vacation	70	-97
Rental Insurance	0	0
Auto Insurance	167	167
Toiletries	10	80
Cosmetics/Hair Care	15	45
Gifts	140	558
Furniture/ Household	75	363
Tyler Pocket Money	50	94
Nicole Pocket Money	50	198
Nicole Student Loan	197	4
Tyler Private Loan	322	1
Tyler Federal Loan	194	-3
Car Loan	1100	0
Miscellaneous	165	229
Fitness	5	303
Baby Things	50	32
Daughter’s Health Insurance	87	87
Water	40	153
Gas	70	48
Daycare	750	565

This is a mid-month look, which is why a few items (like Tithes/Charity, Daycare, and Auto Insurance) have a lot left. A few categories have a  bunch built up, where we’ve been saving for a while. We’re hoping both of our cars will last quite a while, but we’re building up our car replacement fund so that we can buy a car with cash or at least have a very good down payment when we need a new one. For furniture and household, we actually just got a really good deal on some nice living room chairs on Craigslist, so that category is down to around $250 now.

We have a few categories we’re not happy with and need to work on. Our Other Medical category is running low because our FSA ran out earlier than expected this year. Gas and Travel is difficult to pin down. Our families live in another state, so trips to go see them really eat at our budget there. And vacation was built up, but we were just lucky enough to make a trip to a friend’s wedding into a mini-vacation for us and went a little over budget. We try to live conservatively enough that when we do go over we have a cushion in our bank account, and we can keep saving up. We’ll just have to take a little longer to save for our next trip.

Our biggest win in our budget, we think, is the car loan. As I had mentioned before, I was dumb, got too excited, and spent more on a car than I should have. By cutting back other areas, we were able to turn our $200/month car payment into a $1,100/month car payment, and now we should have it paid off in January, about 3 years ahead of schedule. Once that’s done, we’ll roll that entire payment into Nicole’s student loans (our next smallest balance) and start paying that off.

Budgeting is the single most important step to getting your finances where you want them to be. Don’t worry if your budget isn’t perfect the first month! It takes time to see what you spend and make the adjustments you need to make. But once you find the right budget, it keeps you from spending more than you make, and helps you reach your financial goals while still being able to spend money on the things that are important to you.

We know that keeping track of a budget is difficult. That’s why we’re currently working on v3 of our own budgeting software! This is a program that I wrote to help teach myself coding while I was unemployed a few years back, we’re starting from scratch to write a better program than the one we currently use at home. Keep checking back to see when it’s released!

Read More