2016 Spending in Review

Every year I do a look back at our budget categories & our actual expenses per category. It helps me determine which categories need adjustment, or further scrutiny. As a reminder, we budget in two different ways - monthly budget items, which are typical monthly expenses. The amount may vary slightly, but it exists monthly. Yearly budget items are those where we know we will spend the money in the year, but we may spend the entire yearly budget in one month (Christmas), or spread out in dribs & drabs throughout the year.

Monthly expenses:
Okay, so let's see how we did. We finished the year under our planned monthly spend, which is always a good position! This was mostly due to an adjustment of our Seattle mortgage (permanent renters, reduced costs) & refinancing our vacation house.

We were also over in LOTS of monthly categories.
-We've reduced the number of hours we're using for childcare, but are now including date night coverage. This also included summer camps, which were extremely expensive. As a result, and because it impacts how we plan our travel/vacation plans in 2017, I'll be creating a separate summer camp budget this year.
-Also, that dining out number. . . is the result not of frequent small meals out, but a few blowout meals out. So, that will clearly need attention in 2017. We spent $1600 more in 2016 than 2015!! This is why I have a goal to find free/reduced date night options for at least a couple of date nights this year.
-I cut our insurance by making policy modifications.
-Lower gas prices allowed us to continue to save in this category.

Monthly	Budget	Actual	Over/Under
Category
Childcare	16500	18060	-1560
Cleaning	4680	1555	3125
Dining Out	1800	4522.9	-2722.9
Entertainment	600	365.95	234.05
Gas	2880	1884.52	995.48
Groceries	6000	8160.41	-2160.41
Insurance	2253	1392.26	860.74
Rent	60000	62400	-2400
Liquor	600	1305.52	-705.52
Vac Mortg	27600	19168.51	8431.49
Toiletries	300	335.56	-35.56
Seattle Mortg	57900	13960	43940
Utilities	5400	5357.53	42.47
	186513	138468.16	48044.84

Yearly expenses:

Our core tax withholdings, health insurance, and charitable donations are not calculated here (taken away before we see the money). However, due to the overall mix of our compensation, we still typically owe given our stock options. That's listed below, in taxes. Health is a combination of things like race entry fees, the occasional massage for me, etc. Charity is above and beyond our fixed monthly budget that's automatically withheld.

If you take out the taxes, we did pretty well on most of our categories. And, again, we've adjusted our withholdings drastically in 2016, so I'm hopeful this number will be much smaller. Eventually, one day, we will own a house as a primary residence & get to deduct some interest. Until then, we continue to pay $$$$$. 

There were a few other outliers:

-I decided to ramp up the boys college donations to $200/month, hence the overage.

-The boys are clearly expensive, and had a ton of expensive activities. The majority of this was club soccer, but some of it included swimming lessons & flag football (they start in January, but the fees were due in December). 

-We paid $3000 for a one time gift to my dad. M took my dad and a few of his buddies to Las Vegas for an all expenses paid blowout for his 65th birthday. M gets comps at the casino, so this was the overage & own't be repeated next year.

-I've discussed the housing budget in more detail, but I clearly need to start tracking this more carefully. 

-Travel. . . more than planned due to my 40th birthday, three unplanned soccer tournament hotel stays (we didn't expect to go this far - for either team!) & a few other unplanned trips. This year needs to be less, so I will be maximizing travel hacking (using points, hotel rewards, miles, & some airline credits).

Totals	Budget	Actual	Over/Under
Category
Auto	1500	1354.31	145.69
Boys (All)	1000	2106.08	-1106.08
Boys Activities	1500	5037.74	-3537.74
Boys College	2000	2350	-350
Charity	500	678.92	-178.92
Christmas	2000	1053.57	946.43
Clothing (All)	2000	1965.96	34.04
Gifts	1000	4009.63	-3009.63
Health	600	527.76	72.24
House	1500	3604.7	-2104.7
Personal	1000	1139.5	-139.5
Taxes	5000	31721	-26721
Travel	7000	11007.63	-4007.63
	26600	66556.8	-39956.8

I've written a full post about our planned 2017 budget, so I won't go over all of the numbers. All told, we came in $8,088 under budget, but that's hiding a lot of sloppiness in some of the actual categories. Now that we have clean accounting for our rental property, I expect that much more scrutiny will be required in 2017 to bring us in on target.

That's it for 2016 spending! How about you? Did you track & review your spending? Were you on target, below or over? Tell us your tips & tricks, & plans for 2017.