Tuesday, November 1, 2011

October Financial Wrap Up

First off, I'm nervous posting this. I realize we're in a different financial situation than many other personal finance bloggers (we make more/and spend more) & I am a little anxious posting our budget and income. My goals in posting are to keep myself on track, share how we allocate our money, and get feedback from all of you savvy folks.

Okay, with that said, here goes. :-)

You'll note that our expenses were higher than our income this month. While not typical, we do have months where we go over. We have standard income (the same every month) that I use for our regular expenses. We also have non-standard income that we use for things like: travel, the boys college funds, savings, and months where we're over our budget. The non-standard income generally comes in the form of bonuses (I get this 1x/year in September, M is eligible for a bonus 4x/year + stock awards from our employers.) We save this non-standard income for various specific line-items (college funds, travel, house repairs) & the also keep a more general savings slush fund for unexpected expenses.

Tracking our expenses has been extremely helpful! This is our first month of tracking everything (before I only tracked "variable" expenses) & we're going to be making a lot of adjustments going forward as a result.

Income: $14,088. (Typical monthly income from our employers. M also won $700 at a casino that we used to offset some of our anniversary trip. That $700 isn't included in our income number).

Total Spent - $16,859.24

Where did all of that money go? I've listed out all of our expenses, grouped by budget item & also where we're over. As noted, we had some extra money leftover from September (that's when I receive my bonus & stock awards) that I used to: make extra payments on our vacation house, & fund the boys college accounts). We typically have charitable contributions taken out of our paychecks automatically, but I made several extra donations this month, which is why it has no budget allocation.



Fall 2011 Budget
Budget
Actual
Over/Under
Groceries
600
756.42
-156.42
Dining Out
200
458.63
-258.63
Boys Lessons
200
465.5
-265.5
Gas
500
404.71
95.29
Vacation Utilities
200
244.87
-44.87
Primary Utilities
700
803.7
-103.7
Boys Clothes
50
167.21
-117.21
Adult Clothes
50
-281.35
331.35
Gifts
100
790.35
-690.35
Travel
0
1149.37
-1149.37
Child Care
1675
1715
-40
Personal
100
543.57
-443.57
Health
20
18.43
1.57
House
100
360.99
-260.99
Car
50
17.7
32.3
Boys (Misc)
50
26.38
23.62
Liquor
100
168.85
-68.85
Primary Mortg
4850
4800
50
Boys College
0
978
-978
Insurance
200
199.5
0.5
Cleaning
346
320
26
Charity
0
245
-245
Christmas
333
194.54
138.46
Vacation Mortg
1950
2311.87
-361.87
12374
16859.24
-4485.24


Highlights:
  • I was able to pay an extra $361 towards our vacation mortgage, & have now paid off 7.25% of the overall loan. Yeah!
  • I put close to $1000 in college accounts for the kids ($978, to be exact.) :-)
  • We were under on gas for the first time in A LONG time.
  • I returned a few clothing items that I bought in September. It's kind of a highlight, but I overspent that budget item in September, so not sure that it's a net budget win. :-)
Lowlights:
  • We're over on groceries. Again. This month included a bunch of random grocery purchases: the treats that I made for a Halloween party we're more than $25! It was my own foolish mistake that made this happen. I was also in charge of soccer snacks for two separate games, made meals for several families that are struggling, and brought a few meals to family get togethers.
  • It's our first time to separate alcohol from grocery spending, and the goal is to understand where the money is really going. We typically stock up on wine when Costco carries it, as they don't carry it regularly.
  • Boys lessons - this wildly varies month to month depending on when we have to sign them up for a new session. We are thinking of cutting this back a bit, as it feels crazy high!
  • Gifts. Wow. I will be getting reimbursed for $300 of one gift, but we had a ton of events to buy for in October. We'll see how this category stacks up month after month & whether our budget needs to be adjusted and/or our spending needs to be trimmed.
  • Travel. I'll be getting reimbursed about $250 in this category, as I booked a room that my sister & I are sharing. The rest was our anniversary trip. We had a great time, but it was extremely pricey for one night, & we likely won't be doing something like that again. We'll either do a 3 day weekend & spend a bit more but go somewhere, or just do a fancy dinner at home.
  • Personal. I had several appointments fall in the month of October, and the rest is actually my personal training expense from September - the billing cycle if funky. (I've canceled my training going forward).
  • House. We're over on the house because we had to have our oven repaired. It was leaking gas!
So, that's where we netted out for October. I'd love your input - is the way I'm tracking income confusing? Do you want to see our irregular income included? Anything else that I can add so this makes sense? Questions? How did your October go?

6 comments:

  1. This reminds me to post my own month's budget! I completely forgot it was November...

    I think tracking your expenses like this will help you better budget. You see things that you can really cut back on!

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  2. I think it makes sense. Our October went good, could be better though!

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  3. This is an excellent exercise in seeing where your money goes. Isn't it eye opening??

    Do you have a separate emergency fund? I think that would be the first thing I would get in place.

    Your grocery bill looks very similar to ours. I hope to get my bill down to $600.00 too!

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  4. Thanks ladies!

    Sharon, we do have an emergency fund, which is incredibly helpful on a day like today when I realize that I forgot to budget for my license renewal ($150). I'm hoping to cash flow it this month, but . . . these are the things that I need to be better about budgeting for!

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  5. Ouch on the gifts!

    Tracking your ins/outs will definitely help your budget..and thanks for sharing your numbers :)

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  6. I think as long as it makes sense to you that's what is important for tracking your spending. I've thought recently about breaking up our grocery budget a bit more. Right now I have food, wine, and general household products lumped in to one line item. Some months I'd like to know just how much was on food and what was on general house stuff.

    Keep up the good work of tracking. Once you've done it for a year then you'll remember to budget for those once a year or every few year expenditures!

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