July was a strong income month with my wife earning an additional $1,674.68 above her normal pay/auto allowance. We were also able to keep our expenses within reason compared to previous months (click spreadsheet below).
We only went over budget $650, and if you subtract out the $630.44 we spent on business clothing for my wife’s new job, we would have hit our budget mark. It’s encouraging to know our budget is realistic and doable. Although, with a couple of large expenses forecasted for August, it’s doubtful that we will be this close to our budget next month.
We had a lot of money flowing out in June, going over our budget in almost all categories (click on spreadsheet below). I’m beginning to sound like a broken record when it comes to our budget.
My wife and I have committed to doing a better job of watching expenses in July. In fact, we have already declined a couple of social events to help us get July off to a solid start.
We’ve gone over budget each month, so I decided to revise our monthly budget to more accurately reflect our expenses. Our new monthly budget is $6,113.42, to help better account for household expenses, entertainment costs, and a little extra buffer for random expenses.
Nonetheless, we still went over budget, but by a smaller margin. Our total expenses for May were $6,251.88. Click on the spreadsheet below to see the breakdown.
To our credit, it was not because we spent frivolously. There were numerous one-time, annual, and prepayment expenditures that brought our total expenses for April to $7,581.50 (click on spreadsheet below).
On the positive side, my wife netted an extra $1,147.24 in commissions, we had $127.55 in “other” income (see spreadsheet notes), and our interest income doubled to $11.08.
May is forcasted to be a lighter month for us expense wise. If nothing unforseen pops-up (yeah right), we should spend roughly $1,300 less than we did in April.
We had a great net worth increase in March, but did a poor job staying within our budget. We were sadly over budget $775.68 in March (click on spreadsheet below).
A lot of non-monthly bills hit in March, such as both cars needing servicing, buying a baby shower gift, enrolling wife in new insurance program, and a mini vacation. That’s not a good excuse though because we also went over budget for some of our standard monthly bills.
Time to take back some ground by coming in under budget next month!
Stay tuned. . .
Our path to financial independence and retiring early.
