September 2019 Budget

a peek at one of the “new” doors, plus Ellie’s drawing of “a fair” for our visitors

Partial paycheck month, woohoo! And… I think we’ll be able to make some significant progress on one of Mike’s loans with the leftover money we have from my summer salary fund (I’ll report back on this next month). September was a month of spending. Mike did some work on our doors (see a peek in the above pic), we decided to plan a weekend trip to the coast for October, I had my annual hair appt, we started paying Ellie’s preschool tuition, I had a bunch of doctor’s bills, we were super social… it wasn’t anything exorbitant, but we definitely went over budget in a lot of areas. One place we did not go over budget was groceries… it was a ~$600 month!!! I also updated our budget for the school year which will show up in next month’s budget post.

Previous budget posts can be found here: December 2018 (first post with background information), January 2019, February 2019, March 2019, April 2019, May 2019, June 2019, July 2019, and August 2019.

September 2019 budget

Housing
Budgeted: 44.80%
Spent: 46.29%
over budget: 1.49% ⇒ using extra from groceries to cover this

What’s included? Mortgage payment, property taxes, home insurance, home warranty, and any home improvement costs.

September notes: Mike did one final house project for the summer, finishing up painting and adding some trim to the doors on the bedrooms and bathrooms in our house that were previously plain brown. We started this project awhile ago and got through our bedroom, Ellie’s bedroom, and 1 bathroom door. Mike finished up the rest of the doors in our house which involved buying some paint, trim, and door hardware.

Groceries
Budgeted: 20.19%
Spent: 13.88%
Leftover: 6.31% ⇒ using this to cover extra from Housing and health, left the rest in our checking acct

What’s included? Food, non-food cooking stuff, toiletries, cat supplies, cleaning supplies, paper products, pharmacy… anything you can buy at the grocery store.  

September notes: It was a good grocery month with spending totaling just over $600!

Utilities
Budgeted: 6.36%
Spent: 5.10%
Leftover: 1.26% ⇒ Using this to cover some of the extra from dining out/entertainment and left the rest in our checking acct

What’s included? Electric, gas, water, and trash.

Travel related expenses
Budgeted: 7.78%
Spent: 15.74%
Savings for yearly bills: 1.22%
over budget: 7.96% ⇒ moved $ from travel fund in savings

What’s included? Car insurance, gas, car registration (billed every 2 years), AAA (billed once a year), savings for a car maintenance fund, and a general travel fund for family visits and smaller local trips.

September notes: We decided at the last minute to take a weekend trip to the beach in October. I found a reasonably priced hotel room since we’re getting into the off season and we had enough in our savings fund to cover it so we booked it.

Phone/internet
Budgeted: 3.38%
Spent: 3.01%
leftover: 0.37% ⇒ left in checking acct

What’s included? Phone bills, phone insurance, internet

Health
Budgeted: 0.63%
Spent: 4.06%
Over budget: 3.43% ⇒ using extra from groceries to cover this

What’s included? Doctor’s bills (we also have an FSA but keep this additional fund to give us a little more padding just in case), a gym membership [officially dropping this while my back gets squared away], and a savings fund for a summer bootcamp (only taken out during school year, and also dropping this while my back gets squared away).

September notes: I had an MRI bill that hit this month, plus a number of co-pays. Most of these will be reimbursed through our FSA, although we’re almost at the max amount.

Miscellaneous
Budgeted: 3.28%
Spent: 4.80%
savings for yearly bills: 0.38%
Over budget: 1.90% ⇒ Moved $ from hair appt fund and preschool fund from savings

What’s included? A random assortment of things… jewelry insurance (billed once a year), a once a year haircut for me, Netflix, Prime membership (billed once a year), website hosting (billed once a year), and just a general miscellaneous category. For the things that are billed once a year, I just divide them by 12 and include it as a line on our budget each month, putting it into savings each month, letting it earn a tiny bit of interest. In early spring 2019 I added Ellie’s co-op preschool and 2 membership subscription sites that are blog related.

September notes: I had my yearly hair appt and we started paying preschool tuition (which I had started to set aside earlier this year). I had been setting aside funds for my hair appt during the school year, so I took that from our savings. We’ve also got some $ budgeted for preschool and then cover the rest with the savings fund.

Dining out/entertainment
Budgeted: 1.12%
Spent: 4.66%
over budget: 3.54% ⇒ Moved $ from Ellie’s b-day fund in savings to cover part of this, the rest was covered with extra in utilities

What’s included? Dining out/take out, museums, kid stuff (e.g., a class at the rec center for Ellie).

September notes: Our family gave us $$ to get a membership to our local science museum for Ellie for her bday back in May. We’d been putting off actually purchasing it until the rainy season started. We bought the membership this month so that’s where most of this is coming from. We also went a little over on dining out, we were super social this month.

Gifts
Budgeted: 0%
spent: 0%

What’s included? Gifts, mainly for Ellie, sometimes for the occasional wedding or new baby. Mike and I don’t buy each other gifts (aside from the occasional food item during holidays/birthdays). We’ve got a gift moratorium going on for family/friends birthdays. Anything left over in this category gets put into our savings until we need it.  

Clothing
Budgeted: 0%
Spent: 0.21%
over budget: 0.21 ⇒ covered with extra from utilities

What’s included? Clothes (pretty self explanatory)

September notes: I bought a shirt for work (slowly updating my wardrobe).

Retirement
Budgeted: 1.35%
moved to savings: 1.35%

What’s included: Monthly contributions to a Roth IRA

Student loans
Budgeted: 11.11%
Spent: 12.27%
leftovers from above categories: 0% (taking a break for the summer)

What’s included: Mike’s student loan payments and my student loan payments. The % budgeted/spent reflects our bottom line payment (e.g., our minimum payment amounts, plus a little extra on Mike’s so interest doesn’t accrue).

September notes: I finally reworked our budget to account for the changes in our student loan payments. It’s not reflected in this month’s budget, but will be starting in October.

September 2019 Loan Progress