December's Budget

As noted previously, the overtime has ceased at my husband's job. In fact a scattering of layoffs has hit the plant as of last week. We have decided to hold off on the snowball and do mins for a little bit, just to make sure we have some extra money for the holiday and any impending problems we may face.

Debts: 675.00 -- this includes the car and card payments.
Food: 370.00 -- this includes school lunches, groceries and a dining out experience.
Housing: 1465.20 -- this includes mortgage, taxes, insurance, and membership to the heating/cooling repair place.
Medical: 35.00 -- we have a surplus in this envelope to cover medical co-pays and scripts, I just added what I could this month.
Personal: 250.00 -- this includes blow money, life insurance, misc household needs, Netflix subscription, and the hair cut envelope.
Transportation: 452.05 -- this includes insurance, gas, tags and repair sinking fund. (my son pays into this for his car)

Utilities: 530.29 -- this includes phones, cable, electric, gas, and water sinking fund. (my son pays into this for his phone)

September Updates:

September Budget
Sha-pow! Look at the debt total grow! Adding on the new car payment and DS's wisdom teeth bill to this total, plus new tires for the DH's car.

We had to dump some more money into the vet bill fund for the winter. We're still struggling with health issues of our older cat - and we are coming up to allergy season for our younger cat. If you haven't been reading for long, we had to bring our younger cat to the Vet ER for what turned out to be an asthma attack! It was scary stuff!!


Grocery Store Victory
My stockpile is growing by leaps, bounds and mountains! I've been very fortunate to be able to save the kind of money I've been saving. Coupons, sales, rebates have been a true blessing getting groceries and stockpiles for next to nothing.

If you haven't checked out HOT COUPON WORLD, I strongly suggest that you do. The scenarios they come up with are beyond amazing!!!

Appreciation Speaks Volumes
What motivates you? Are you a self motivator? What does it mean when someone tells you that they really appreciate what you do?

I'm a self starter at work. I know what I need to do and that's what I do. Every week, I make a list of what I want to/have to accomplish and I cross things off as I go. Sometimes I think the boss has no idea what I do because I just get things done.

This weekend, the managers were brought into the office one and a time the boss talked to us. Don't get me wrong, my boss OFTEN says "Thank you." and "Great Job." but you never know if he from the heart means it or not. This talk you knew without a shadow of a doubt that he meant it. I felt like a kid showing his prized art piece to his mother and the elatedness when she said it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen! It was an amazing feeling to know that even the little extra things I do - he notices and APPRECIATES.

Christmas Shopping
This is the best time to start grocery shopping. I don't care what kind of sales they have after Thanksgiving - if you compared them to the everyday prices now - you won't find much of a difference. What you will find are less people, less traffic and less aggravation. So the answer is "YES". I have started my Christmas shopping. 2 gifts down and several more to go! I'm keeping my eyes peeled for deals and my earned gift cards from places like MyPoints.com, ChaCha and our phone rebate to help pay for it all! Let the fun begin!

August Budget

Welcome August - hope I prepared enough for this!

School Registration:
Registration is later this month for my ds's junior year of high school. Nice thing about high school is the school supply list is pretty basic and simple. Paper, Notebooks, Pens, Pencils, Folders, Binders. We don't need 4 glue sticks, 3 packs of crayons, 2 boxes of tissues and what ever else is on those lists that really doesn't NEED to available on the first day of school. (if at all, but I don't want to get in an argument about that) I've been buying supplies on sale with left over grocery money. NICE!

So simple school shopping, a few new pairs of jeans, shoes, funding his lunch account and paying for his woods class projects. That should cover the costs.

Insurance:
You're going to notice some screwy rises in my car insurance. We bought a new car so now we have 3 cars and 3 drivers - so my ds's insurance will go up up up as a full time driver of my old car. So next month you will also see a new car payment in my debt category also.

Out of Debt Date Changes:
So, of course - this is my blog telling my story about how I'm getting out of debt. See how easy it is - even Wendy can do it. Truth is, we threw ourselves a bit deeper into debt by getting the Mazda3 that I have posted previously about. When it comes to the blog, I feel I should be ashamed because 1) I didn't pay cash for it and 2) I didn't wait until I had my credit card debt paid for. However, in the scheme of things in my real life - it was something I felt justified doing. I keep cars for a long time. My last car (which ds will take over on until it's last sputter) I drove for 10 years. 6 of those years with no payments.

Okay, long story short - you will see car payments starting next month.

Monthly Budget for July

Credit Cards
Well, technically they are both held with Citibank now. My transfer fee was $99.00, but I will make up for that with my 0% in no time.

Groceries
5 shopping trips this month. Had to allot for that. My stockpile has been incredible, but I still have to look for dinner items and just things we run out of.

Property Taxes & the Water Bill
Both due this month, so I actually will not be adding these things into sinking funds -- they will be paid this month.

Vet Bills
{{knock on wood}} there is plenty in the sinking funds envelope for the kitties this month.

Rearranging the "Blow" Categories
Back to where we were a month ago. There is a MISC fund for Misc Walmart needs (cat litter, water softener salt, misc yard maintenance needs, etc) Hate to say I was right to have them both separated -- but I was!

Hair
All three of us hitting up the sinking fund for hair cuts this month!

Gifts
DH's birthday is next month and Christmas is not that far off ... I'm a little worried. I don't have a whole lot saved up for that yet!

Gas Prices
I've had to add so much extra for the Gasoline costs. Hopefully I have a handle on what we need now.




Screen shot courtesy of my YNAB Software

June Budget

June Budget

No big changes here except for that mighty fine payment to Bank of America (thanks to some overtime!)

We'll be changing cell phone plans this month and DS will be picking up more of the tab on that.

Looking for a bit more approved overtime in June from my job because of the training season - and then things should level out. My amazing dh, on the otherhand, should be seeing overtime for awhile!

Let the Summer Begin!

Budget Plan for May

Budget Snapshot courtesy of:

You Need A Budget "YNAB" Software

Budget for May
Why yes, it does look so similar to April. I'm not counting in the government rebate check into this yet. I haven't finalized plans for it. Ideas playing in my head keep changing a little bit. I would love to put it all towards my Bank of America debt, but reality is -- I really want to put some into our pantry stockpile and a little aside for Christmas too.

Also in May ... my hubby and my 17th Anniversary. Right around the corner, actually. We haven't made plans yet on what we are going to do to celebrate our anniversary, but the day before we are going to the Brewer's Game. (hence the blow money is a little inflated)

Car insurance went up, but the ds is paying the difference so that will be manageable.

I think the only thing that I can think of that poses problems is the grocery bit. Seriously, I've been comparing prices between 4 stores and it's truly a riddle I can't solve. Walmart is cheaper on some things - but not all. I really need to start writing a price book.

Gearing up for April

April's Budget

Again, courtesy of my You Need a Budget (YNAB) software I present by April budget! (you'll see a pun here shortly)

Changes to the budget this month include a reduction in school lunches. Because of Spring Break, I had left over funds in the lunch account that can roll over until April.

We changed plans for our Budget Billing with the Master Plumbers to include our expensive MicroPowerguard furnace filters.

$6.00 for cell phone? Well, that's because I accidentally paid them twice this month. Oops! Forgot that I had just signed up for autopay. DUH!

Gifts will be a new addition from now on. I've been meaning to put in on here, but this month was a no-brainer because ... IT'LL BE MY 39th BIRTHDAY IN APRIL! Of course, part of that money will reimburse the checking account for by son's Easter present that I forgot to budget for March. OOPS!

The grocery stockpile is growing by leaps and bounds. I've had to rearrange the upper shelf in my closet to help store extra boxes of pasta and other staples that I was able to get a good deal on while I have the extra grocery money. I'll be dipped if we are going to have a flour shortage and I won't have pasta! I won't hear of it!
LOL.


Finding Money
The whole thing about this process is to find money in places you wouldn't be looking normally. Squeeze your budget til it screams - etc.

Today, I decided to try my luck and contact Bank of America to see if I could get a lower APR rate on my credit card. I half expected them to laugh at me because I haven't used the card .. it's just been a storage account for my transferred balance.

Long story short - they lowered my rate from 14.75% to 9.9% without any hassle at all.
That should save me about $300 in finance charges. (if my pay off date goes as planned) NICE!

What's with the UNDER CONSTRUCTION thing there, Wendy?
I thought I may do a BS2 in rewind. Not that what I've done is beyond spectacular, but I thought I would share my story and what I did back in July when I decided to do my TMMO. What I did to get me to where I am now which is halfway between here and there.

BZZZ Agent - BZZ of the Day
So from time to time, I get to try new products and let people know what I thought of them.
I got in the mail today my Glade Wisp Flameless Candle. I was excited to get this because I often light candles and leave them burning unsupervised - especially in the powder room. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson from my gel potpourri incident at the last house. Gel Potpourri burns quick and leaves dense smoke in case you didn't know. Anyway, this new Wisp Flameless Candle holder is much bigger than I was expecting. I was picturing a holder that would hold something similar to a votive. This is much bigger - looks very nice and is easy to turn on and off. Best yet, safe for use in my powder room (or anywhere else that I've left it unattended) It's available in an array of Glades fragrances including my favorite Rainshower! I've got those darn plug ins all over my house too!

Oh is my Mom going to be upset!

Her "secret" recipe for Spaghetti Pie was one of the meals on my Aldi Store Emealz menu list this week! The recipes are very darn similar! And because my mom will never get a computer, I don't mind sharing the recipe because it is sooooo yummy!!!

You can find here in one my previous posts: Spaghetti Pie

March Budget

Snapshot of my budget with YNAB program

We made a couple of adjustments - mainly with the food budget for a little while. DH has decided to give up brunt of what was his blow money for the grocery budget. He's "getting it" now, I think.

Included also are allowances for an oil change and a hair cut for dh too.

Extra snowball money will be added to the Bank of America card. *notice all the empty spaces in the debt category?? ALL PAID OFF!!*

January 2008 Budget

What's wrong with the budget?

Whew! December is a L E A N month for income! I had to make some adjustments to make it work. For one, our taxes are more than I have allowed (but there will be time to make them up before July). We're going to have to float this month for doctor visits on what's left over from previous months. There's an extra grocery trip day this month so I had to pop a few more dollars into that fund too. Mike uses his Blow Money to pay for off the wall stuff so it's kind of an entertainment, household misc and Mike's blow fund in actuality.

January is a 5/3 paycheck month!

That makes February extra special! The extra income plus a CD maturing will look really good for my payoff totals!!

December's Budget

From our YNAB program: (click on pic to enlarge)

December Oddities: A little more personal money going out because of the holidays & both cats need to go to the vet.
Keep in Mind: DS pays $50 into this budget because of his phone and subscription.

November's Monthly Budget (Draft One)

FOOD: 400.00
Groceries - 300.00
Dining Out - 50.00
School Lunches - 50.00

AUTOS: 333.00
Gasoline - 260.00
Insurance - 63.00
Registrations - 10.00

DEBT aka SNOWBALL ITEMS: 1100.00
Elantra *
Citibank
Chase
B of A
HELOC

OTHER DEBT: 607.00
Citibank Card with smallest balance (not in snowball)

HOUSEHOLD: 804.00*
Mortgage - 791.00
Master Plumbers Club Membership - 12.00
*we escrow our own taxes - have enough in the savings account for the rest of the year to cover January's bill

MEDICAL/HEALTH: 70.00 (sinking funds)
Dentist - 25.00
Co Pays - 20.00
Prescriptions - 20.00

UTILITIES: 484.00
Cable/Internet/Phone - 123.00
Cell Phones x 3 - 117.00 (actual OOP is 91.00)
Electric - 89.00 (budget billing)
Gas - 63.00 (budget billing)
Water 92.00 (yes, we know... it's HIGH -- it's the town, not just US)

PERSONAL: 237.00
Family Blow Money - 20.00 (not typical)
Wendy Blow Money - 60.00 (not typical)
Life Insurance (2 monthly - 1 annual premium) 82.00
Subscriptions (son pays for 24.00) 43.00
Misc Household Stops - 32.00

RECREATION: 80.00
May or may not need. Still have funds left in the envelope from August!

Christmas is already fully budgetted for. Now all I have to do is go SHOPPING.