2013 - halfway point check

With the passing of June, six months in 2013 are officially over! As such, I thought it would be helpful to look at each of my budget categories, & determine where I'm over, under, or on target for the year, and what I need to do to hit my overall budget goal for 2013. It's taken me some time to put this all together, so I need to quickly implement changes for the second half of the year.

As of right now, I've spent 53.6% of our 2013 budget. So - over the 50% mark, but still within target if I make some adjustments.

Categories where we're over:

• Groceries. At nearly 60% of our yearly target. Gulp.
• Dining out. This is just shameful, but we're at 116% of our yearly target. Now, admittedly I cut our budget in half from 2012, but we really need to correct this immediately. I'm fine with the monthly date nights, but there's too much other frivolous spending in here. One issue is that we're frequently eating on the drive to/from the beach. We can prevent this by leaving later and/or bringing something to eat in the car, which I prefer over fast food anyway.
• Gas - At 60% of our yearly target. Lots of driving back & forth to the beach. We're trying to drive our more fuel efficient car whenever possible.
• Primary residence utilities - at 72%. I had to start paying for my cell phone bill at work, and our power bill is up pretty drastically year-over-year, due to utility hikes.
• Boys clothes - 183%. I've spent $504 so far this year! I can't believe this. I've never really tracked it before, but it's far more than expected. I assume I can do better, but with buying new ski gear (I look for sales, but lots of options in their sizes tends to be rare) & new jeans, etc as they grow out of them. . . I'm hoping that we're good for the rest of the year.
• My clothes - at 106%. I picked up the few things I had on my list (a new bathing suit, a maxi dress, and a couple of sweaters for work). I don't anticipate buying anything else.
• Gifts - at 129%. My grandmother's 80th birthday trip pushed this one over.
• Travel. No budget. Spent $3322 so far. I'm hoping to offset most of this with my eBay earnings.
• Personal - 82%. This is mostly hair cuts for everyone. The boys hair cut barber shop is just getting ridiculous - almost $40 for two kids hair cuts?! We're definitely looking for a cheaper option.
• House - 466%. Spent $5,360 and budget was $1150. . . I foolishly didn't create a category for home repairs. This category was meant to cover household items (trash bags, cleaning supplies, etc), but we've had to do almost $4,000 in home repairs to our vacation house.
• Dry cleaning - no budget. Spent $110. We've switched to Dryel for the majority of our cleaning going forward - save for M's suits, which need to still be dry cleaned.
• Car - 293%. This is the one that annoys me the most. Someone hit my car & did $1500 of damage - and, didn't leave a note. We paid for the repairs ourselves.
• Boys (misc) - 77%. We haven't been spending that much (we're below $200 on all kid-related spending for the year - not covered in other categories), but it seems to trickle out. We don't have an entertainment category, so this has been mostly activity-related.
• Liquor - 140%. Knowing that my favorite (and inexpensive!) wine is only available in the summer, I stocked up. Let's hope we don't need to buy much more for the year.
• Boys birthdays - 118%. I came close to our budget. ;-) No future spending for 2013.
• Taxes - 243%. Let's not talk about this one, but no future spending for 2013.
• Refinance - not budget. Spent $1899, but we've saved a lot over the course of the year.

And, categories where we're on track or under!

• Boys lessons - at 37%. We've just cut back the number of activities and looked for bargains when possible.
• Vacation house utilities - at 49%. Right on target!
• Child care - at 37%. When I created our budget, I forgot that I put $5,000 in a tax savings account for childcare, which accounts for the savings.
• Health - 25%. This was mostly allocated to race fees, and my lupus diagnosis put a (hopefully temporary) stop to my running.
• Primary residence mortgage - 19%. This is our biggest savings of the year, due to our refinance. We do plan to increase our principal payments after all of the house repairs are done.
• Insurance  at 50%. It's a planned/fixed fee, so easy to stay on track. ;-)
• Cleaning - at 32%. We've cut *way* back, & picked up the slack on our end.
• Vacation house mortgage - at 42%, courtesy of our refinance.

As you can see, we still have a lot of work to do to hit our 2013 financial goals. Here's what I'm working on to try & bring us back on target:

1. Call about our car insurance. They just raised our rates again (and, we pay $4,000/year!), so I'm going to see what we can drop.
2. Find a less expensive place for the boys hair cuts.
3. Really evaluate my clothing budget, as well as the boys, & not make any unnecessary purchases.
4. Continue to look for opportunities to cut our utilities, grocery & gas costs. Groceries are hard for us, but I'll keep working on it.
5. And, make enough money via eBay to offset our travel expenses, which were unbudgeted.

How about you? How are you doing with your 2013 budget? On track? If you're over, how are you going to get things back on target? If you're under, what is your secret to success? :-)