November 2019 Budget

2011 - Father daughter dance at the NC Aquarium on Roanoke Island

I first shared the link to my blog with my parents back in February 2018 (I waited a few months to make sure I didn’t crash and burn). My dad’s response was “simply amazing!!!” The part he was most excited about was our budget. During one of our skype calls he pulled out a notebook with his handwritten budgets from over 30 years ago! He was noticing how, for the most part, our finances looked pretty similar. The major difference was student loan payments/debt (and probably Netflix…). When going through his things I wasn’t able to find the budgets he showed me during that call but I did find an outline for a book that he apparently wanted to write that was all about… you guessed it… budgeting! Clearly that desire has been passed on down to me.

November brings me to 12 months of budgets. This one is an eyeopener for how expensive it is to die in this country. I knew this anecdotally from reading about funeral costs and ads from companies trying to sell life insurance, but to experience it firsthand is a completely different ballgame. What we’ve spent so far is a drop in the bucket compared to many other families. And, at the same time, when you’re hit with a few thousand dollars of unexpected expenses, things can feel suffocating. All of what we’ve paid will get reimbursed through the estate at some point in the future; however, covering everything up front meant draining our savings of pretty much everything except my salary for the summer months. I can easily see how a death in the family can put you into a lot of debt that would be difficult to crawl out of. Currently crossing my fingers that no other major expenses come up for us while we wait to get reimbursed.

One other piece that has helped us to keep costs “lower” than the average family is that my dad served in the military, which means his burial expenses are covered (minus cremation) since we’re going with a national cemetery. This has made a super stressful experience feel a little bit less stressful and I’m thankful for that. In addition to burial and estate related costs, we also live ~3000 miles away, which means we had to book last minute cross country flights…. also not a small expense. We did call the airlines and specifically book bereavement flights, which amounted to about 200 off (can’t remember if this was per person or in total). We’ve talked about getting an airline credit card but have never gotten around to it, I can definitely see how that would have been helpful in this situation.

Here’s our November 2019 budget. I’ll be back next month with one final budget to round out 2019.

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, August 2019, and September 2019, October 2019.

November 2019 budget

Housing
Budgeted: 43.41%
Spent: 42.77%
Leftover: 0.64% ⇒ used to cover some of our travel/burial expenses

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

Groceries
Budgeted: 19.54%
Spent: 16.03%
Leftover: 3.51% ⇒ used to cover some of our travel/burial expenses

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

Utilities
Budgeted: 7.46%
Spent: 5.34%
Leftover: 2.12% ⇒ used to cover some of our travel/burial expenses

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

Travel related expenses
Budgeted: 8.47%
Spent: 41.38%
Savings for yearly bills: 0%
Over budget: 32.91% ⇒ Pulled from emergency fund plus other savings funds

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.

November notes: We purchased 3 plane tickets. Our flight out was on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving… which all things considered was a good day to travel as there weren’t many crowds. The second leg of our journey was pretty empty (we could have each had a row to ourselves on the plane if we wanted). We flew back to Oregon on Thanksgiving day, which was also not terribly crowded. We weren’t feeling in a festive mood and being on a plane/vegging out with the TVs in the seatbacks was just what we needed. Plus Delta gave everyone on board a complementary dinner. We purchased more in gas than we typically would this month, filling up cars we used while back on the east coast.

Phone/internet
Budgeted: 3.29%
Spent: 2.80%
Leftover: 0.49% ⇒ used to cover some of our travel/burial expenses

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

Health
Budgeted: 1.09%
Spent: 0.22%
Leftover: 0.87% ⇒ used to cover some of our travel/burial expenses

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).

Miscellaneous
Budgeted: 3.32%
Spent: 80.77%
Savings for yearly bills: 0%
Over budget: 77.45% ⇒ Pulled from emergency fund plus other savings funds

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.

November notes: Most of this was put towards cremation costs and a probate tax bill.

Dining out/entertainment
Budgeted: 1.09%
Spent: 1.82%
Over budget: 0.73% ⇒ Pulled from emergency fund plus other savings funds

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

November notes: Earlier in the month we’d treated friends to a dinner out and also grabbed a quick lunch when we were out/about one weekend so we went a little bit over here.

Gifts
Budgeted: 0.54%
spent: 0.24%
Leftover: 0.30% ⇒ used to cover some of our travel/burial expenses

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: 0.54%
Spent: 0%
Leftover: 0.54% ⇒ used to cover some of our travel/burial expenses

What’s included? Clothes (pretty self explanatory)

Retirement
Budgeted: 1.30%
moved to savings: 1.30%

What’s included: Monthly contributions to a Roth IRA

Student loans
Budgeted: 9.22%
Spent: 9.22%
Leftovers from above categories: Pausing until we build our savings back up

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).

November notes: Serious student loan payoff will wait until our finances get a bit more settled.

November 2019 Student Loan Progress