June 2008 Budget

Here is our budget for June 2008. Hoping to do much better in June than in May. May was by far our worst month on plan since we started in February 2007. Not only was it the first month that we were not able to pay anything towards our snowball, only paying the minimum on our last debt, but we also "adjusted" our budget by $3,000 in basically unaccounted for expenses.

(I do not have the energy to go through the entire month to account for everything. Some of the expenses were necessary and legitimate and many were not. I am choosing to just start fresh on June 1st.)

Most of our June budget is pretty average and self explanatory. The "other" income of $957 is money my sisters will be paying me back for plane tickets I paid for for out summer trip together to visit our parents.

Expenses	June
AUTO-Excise Tax	$0
AUTO-Gas	$350
AUTO-Insurance	$138
AUTO-Maintenance	$0
CASH-Clothing	$0
CASH-Dining Out	$120
CASH-Gifts	$70
CASH-Grocery	$500
CASH-Kids Allowance	$50
CASH-Parties	$0
CASH-School Lunch	$36
CASH-Spending	$200
DEBT-Equity Loan	$1,900
DEBT-Visa	$0
HOME-Cable/Phone	$181
HOME-Electric	$220
HOME-Furnace	0
HOME-Mortgage	$2,328
HOME-Oil	$350
HOME-Trash	$65
KIDS-Bball	$0
KIDS-Misc.	$0
KIDS-Piano	$0
KIDS-Preschool	$0
MISC.	$0
PERSONAL-Cell Phone	$50
PERSONAL-Contacts	$0
PERSONAL-Life Ins.	$0
PERSONAL-Newspap	$8
PERSONAL-Rx	$0
PERSONAL-Braces	$100
PERSONAL-BR Sports	$0
PERSONAL-Vacation	$0
TRANSFER-To Sav 2	$200
TOTAL	$6,866
INCOME	June
1st Paycheck	$2,588
1st Commission	$500
15th Paycheck	$2,588
Church Pay	$100
Babysitting Pay	$160
Other	$957
Transfer from Savings	$0
TOTAL	$6,893
CASH FLOW	June
Beginning Balance	$241
'+ Income	$6,893
Subtotal	$7,134
'- Expenses	$6,866
Subtotal	$268
Save For Next Month	$268
Ending Balance	$0
SAVINGS FLOW	June
Beginning Balance	$10,642
'+ Transfer to Savings	$200
Subtotal	$10,842
'- Transfer from Savings	$0
Subtotal	$10,842
Ending Balance	$10,842

Revolution Money Exchange

One of the (few) things that I have done right lately is to sign up for Revolution Money Exchange.

They are running a special where they will give you a free $25 just for signing up! It's great!

If you haven't heard of RME, it is very similar to Paypal (but without fees). Basically it is an on line payment service.

With their special, you sign up for free and they transfer $25 immediately into your RME account. To sign up you need to give them your email address, name, address, phone, and social security number. That's it. Then you get the $25 in your account which you can use to buy something on line immediately! Or, you can give them your bank account information and have the money transferred into your bank account.

I signed up and had my husband sign up and we each got $25. Then I had the $50 transferred into our bank account. A nice free snowflake!

And if you use the RME link in my side bar when you go to sign up, I will get $10 for each person I refer.

I think it's a great deal!

Hello

Not quite sure what to report.

Haven't been spending wildly, but haven't been super frugal either. It seems silly but I can just tell even at the grocery store that I'm not quite back to normal yet. Lately I've been feeling like we never have everything my family wants to eat in the house. So when I stopped at the grocery store - I just bought what everyone wanted. Nothing extravagant, but not my usual frugal self either. For example, I picked up hot dog rolls and paid $2.69. Normally I would pass these right by as I know I can get them somewhere else for $ .69. But lately I just don't feel like making my family "suffer".

I can't help but think of Amy Dacyzcyn (of the Tightwad Gazette) and how she would say that nothing would induce her to pay more for an item (than the lower price she knew she could get). I used to feel like this. Lately it seems though, I just want to be more "normal", and just walk in to the store and pick up what my family wants/needs. (Then I think of Dave Ramsey saying "Don't be normal!").

So, basically I think I am starting/trying to climb back on the horse, but haven't completely gotten up there yet.

Update

Okay. Spent Saturday going over all the finances. I confess that I really just did a "where are we now" look at things, and did not go over the nitty gritty of exactly where and how much we overspent.

Basically, I had originally thought we would be able to deposit $10,000 into our savings . . . turns out we were only able to deposit $8,500. (This savings is for the new heating system we need to put in this summer to the tune of about $5,000, plus DD1's braces, some vacation savings for my sister who may be having a destination wedding, and some buffer money for the low commission months.)

This does not mean exactly that we "blew" $1,500 by not paying attention over the last several weeks. Some of this money was spent on necessities - like repairing the brakes on DH's car, which we had budgeted for $400 but turned out to cost $700. And there was my friend's daughter's Bat Mitzvah which in the end cost us almost $200. Etc.

BUT - there was a lot over general overspending. Eating out. Shopping. Non-necessity purchases.

I'll even confess that I went on another mini shopping spree today, and spend $200+ on clothes for myself. Although I have put on some extra weight :(, I can't really justify this spending as necessity. It was more like a balm. I was feeling a bit down about myself and did a little "retail therapy". I guess old patterns die hard. And the sad thing is - the shopping spree worked. I do feel happier having some nice clothes that fit well. It changes my outlook a little (at least for the short term).

Anyway, confession is over. The budget is back in place.

I am getting back up on that horse . . .

Today's The Day

Today's the day I'm going to face the music. Yup. Going to check out bank balances and credit card balance. Update the budget. Check the envelopes (which I'm pretty sure are all empty). And update our total debt figures. And check the new projection of when we can anticipate being debt free.

These are all things I had been doing on a daily basis for the past 14 months but haven't even looked at in several weeks. Because of that it is going to be a lot more time consuming.

I'll post my updates when I'm done. (Crossing my fingers that the damage won't be too bad!)

I've Been Bad

Wow, haven't posted in quite a while!

I have been busy, but I have to admit that part of the reason for not posting is that I have not been paying attention to my finances properly.

Several things have been going on.

One bad thing that I am embarrassed to even post about - is credit cards. Yup. One day last month I was making a purchase at the party goods store. I had two American Express gift cards that I was trying to use to make the purchase. But for some reason they wouldn't work. And at that time our bank balance was very low so I was afraid to use my debit card. Sooo - what did I do? Yup. I used a credit card. I told myself I would go home and make the payment on line immediately. (You know what is paved with good intentions!) Well, of course, I forgot. And because we have no credit card debt right now, I wasn't looking out for that bill. And it didn't get paid. And, yes, they hit me with a $30 late fee! And I only charged $8!

I do plan on calling to see if they will waive the late fee, but honestly, I just haven't been able to face it.

The other things going on should be good. We got our tax refund (a big one!) and we got our stimulus check. I did plug these into my yearly budget, taking them out of upcoming months (I was expecting them to arrive later), but for some reason, I can't get my yearly budget to work out. I drove myself crazy with it one night until I couldn't take it anymore. Then I gave up. And honestly, I haven't been watching my finances since then. I just got so frustrated that I didn't feel like dealing with it. Part of the reason is that we have such a large amount of money in the account now that I sort of feel like I don't have to worry about it. This is not really the case. All these funds have already been allocated and we shouldn't be spending the money now.

I guess it's sort of like a study I heard about where people will unconsciously use more of something from a very large container - like if you have a huge bottle of shampoo, you are likely to use more per wash than if you have a tiny bottle. Well, our huge bank balance has set me on a kind of shopping spree too.

Yup. For the first time since we started the plan I have allowed myself to buy clothes for myself and the kids. Clothes that are not necessarily necessities and not exactly budgeted for.

My husband needed the brakes on his car fixed, which we had budgeted $400 for, and it ended up costing $700. The new/used riding lawn mower needed a new battery to the tune of $50. We went to a bat mitzvah of a friend's daughter which cost us $100 for the gift and $80 for the babysitter. All these things were not budgeted for!

I am just overwhelmed with all the unexpected expenses and haven't had the courage to sit down and figure it all out. I need to though . . .

May 2008 Budget

Here is our budget for this month. Our very large "other" income is our tax refund that just arrived. (We have changed our withholding so that next year we will not get such a large refund.)

Our "misc" expenses of $1,060 is for our purchase of a used riding lawn mower.

Expenses	May
AUTO-Excise Tax	$0
AUTO-Gas	$350
AUTO-Insurance	$138
AUTO-Maintenance	$400
CASH-Clothing	$0
CASH-Dining Out	$120
CASH-Gifts	$65
CASH-Grocery	$400
CASH-Kids Allowance	$50
CASH-Parties	$0
CASH-School Lunch	$36
CASH-Spending	$160
DEBT-Equity Loan	$200
DEBT-Visa	$0
HOME-Cable/Phone	$181
HOME-Electric	$160
HOME-Furnace	0
HOME-Mortgage	$2,328
HOME-Oil	$350
HOME-Trash	$0
KIDS-Bball	$0
KIDS-Misc.	$0
KIDS-Piano	$0
KIDS-Preschool	$175
MISC.	$1,060
PERSONAL-Cell Ph	$0
PERSONAL-Contacts	$99
PERSONAL-Life Ins.	$0
PERSONAL-Newspap	$8
PERSONAL-Rx	$10
PERSONAL-Braces	$500
PERSONAL- Sports	$0
PERSONAL-Vacation	$0
TRANSFER- Savings	$10,000
TOTAL	$16,790
INCOME	May
1st Paycheck	$2,220
1st Commission	$1,061
15th Paycheck	$2,177
Church Pay	$100
Babysitting Pay	$160
Other	$10,925
Transfer fr Savings	$0
TOTAL	$16,643
CASH FLOW	May
Beginning Balance	$338
'+ Income	$16,643
Subtotal	$16,981
'- Expenses	$16,790
Subtotal	$191
Save For Next Month	$191
Ending Balance	$0

Today

I did take out all the cash we'll need for May and funded our cash envelopes. I used our annual budget to figure out the amount needed. I still need to go over the month with my husband to make sure we haven't forgotten any expenses that we will have this month. I know we have one party to go to that we will need to give a $100 gift. Luckily my husband's commission this month was $1,000 instead of the $300 we had budgeted. Hopefully we'll be able to use some of this as snowflakes, especially since we don't really have a snowball this month (because of needing to buy a used lawn tractor for $1,000).

Still need to review April to see how we did actual vs. budget.

I also need to get my jewelry income and expenses in order. I made 11 sales in April, which I'm very pleased about. Hopefully the numbers will show a positive cash flow that can also turn into snowflakes.

Lots to do - but at least I have the cash envelopes funded. It's a first step.