Remember that time I was on the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast with Dr. Emily Roberts? Well, Emily recently published a ‘where are they now’ type episode where I give a quick update on what I’ve been up to since I was on the podcast.
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Way back in December 2018 I shared my first budget post, laying out where our money goes each month. While a lot in life has changed since then, our finances have remained steady. They’re on autopilot. In terms of finances, this month was pretty ordinary, we went a little over in a few categories and were under in others, so it all balanced out. As I mentioned last month, we’re focused on rebuilding savings right now, extra student loan payments are on hold for the time being.
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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 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…).
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The biggest piece of budget related news this month is that we paid off another one of Mike’s loans!!! 🎉🎉🎉 I got some money in September and October for re-working the online versions of two courses that I teach (still working on one of them!), which we put straight towards the current loan we were focusing on. We padded it with just under $1,000 from our emergency savings account (which is now at about $1,000) and were able to pay it off.
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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.
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Summer is coming to an end, which is sad… and also exciting because that means I get a paycheck again! Before October starts and my full paycheck kicks back in (I get a partial paycheck in September), I need to do an overhaul of our budget to re-evaluate how much we need to set aside for next summer. I’d also like to think through the exemptions we claim (I think that’s the right terminology) and maybe make some adjustments. We usually get a decent amount back during tax time and I’d rather have that money in each paycheck as opposed to getting a lump sum in April.
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July is the first summer month with no paycheck of any sort, so we’re pulling entirely from savings (using the money I’ve been setting aside each month during the school year). We also got hit with a big car maintenance bill this month (~$700), so we drained our car maintenance fund (which was just over $500) and then dipped into the emergency fund to pay the rest of the bill. Oddly enough, I looked at our car maintenance bills from the previous year and we had a major bill (~$800) on the very same day last year… apparently we’re very consistent about our car repairs.
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You might be wondering what the the picture above is all about… well, Ellie’s night time sleep routine is holding steady, with at least one middle of the night wake up per night. Our friends have a “toddler clock” and had good results with it; however, we didn’t want to shell out any money for something that Ellie was just going to ignore. That’s where this car (aka Bob the car), nightlight, trivet situation comes in.
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A few months ago I had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Emily Roberts of Personal Finance for PhDs on her podcast. If you’re not familiar with Emily, she runs an awesome website with lots of info about the ins and outs of all the financial decisions that grad students and early career PhDs are faced with. During the episode we chatted about my student loan situation, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, stay and home dad-ing, and more!
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Despite feeling like we were hemorrhaging money during May, we managed to stay within our overall budget. Makes me feel good about the amounts we’ve set for each line item and that our budget is flexible enough that it can accommodate “spendier” months.
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