Blogging Away Debt Our Journeys to a Debt-Free Life

by Ashley

Hi all! Happy Independence Day to the U.S. readers! I hope you all have a safe, happy, and healthy long holiday weekend! I’ve scheduled this post ahead of time because I’ll be spending time with family all day today. For those of you who would like an update on our Utah trip, we decided to split the drive into 2 days on the way there and drive straight through in 1 day on the way back. We’re coming back Sunday (meaning, we won’t be home until late Sunday night). I’ll try to write a post with this trip’s expenses as soon as we return.

I promised an update on our budget for the month of June. This was my second (and last) month of trying to do the envelope system. This month I’ll be using the YNAB free 30 day trial (and it sounds like some readers will be doing it with me!). I’ll certainly update about my experiences with that along the way, but for now let’s cut to the chase of how I did with our June spending.

Overall, we didn’t do terrible. I feel like I’ve given you a ton of budgets lately (“old” and “updated” – see this post), so instead of boring you with yet another budget, let me just give you the bottom line.

Here are our budgeting “fails” for the month:

• First: We went way over with groceries. I had budgeted $380, and spent $453. Some of this was due to expenses from hosting the toddlers’ second birthday party. But some of it was just due to unnecessary spending on ‘gourmet’ grocery expenses (like cheeeeeese), and a big Costco trip. I have raised my grocery budget back up to $400 (where it was set prior to starting blogging), and I am excited to stick to the $400-limit. I will NOT go over this month. I will NOT go over this month. I will NOT go over this month. If I say it, it must be true. Yes? (psssst: but using the YNAB system, its okay if I go over a little because I can take that money from another category).
• Second: We failed on our “eating out” budget. I had budgeted $75 and spent $149 (nearly double!!!) The funny thing is that I really don’t even remember eating out much this month. Then I look at my spreadsheet and see a string of drink stops (Starbucks, Sonic, Wendys – who has the best strawberry lemonade in the world!) All of these stops, individually, is only in about the $4 range. But they sure did add up! There are only 2 actual dinners out….ALL the rest of the expenses are little trips here and there that added up. This was total lack of constraint on my part. I WILL do better this month!

And here are our budget “successes” for the month:

• First: Our childcare expenses were much lower than normal this month, so we saved a couple hundred dollars there.
• Second: I was proud of myself in that I was “under” budget in all of my “miscellaneous” categories besides eating out (to jog your memory, the other categories include:  entertainment, personal maintenance, and “other”). I’m thinking I might be able to lower the “other” budget a little but I want to wait a month and see how things go. I was barely below budget this month ($120 out of $125 budgeted), but since I’m saving for so many different things now, I’m hoping I can reduce this category of spending.

All of my other expenses were pretty much in-line with what they should be (either at- or under-budget). The only other categories with higher spending were in debt payments (where we paid nearly $2000), and my gym membership (since the first month I had to pay $240 – to account for first and last month’s payments + an initiation fee). This should decrease back down to $70. (Side note = I realized in my updated budget I had my gym line-item as $50, but that’s the base fee…I’m paying an extra $10/child for gym childcare, so the monthly cost should be $70).

Whew! Lots of words! Now onto some numbers:

June Income: $9406

June Expenses: $5706

Income – Expenses = $3700 surplus (woohoo!!!)

How will we spend the surplus?

$500 = snowflake payment toward Chris’ license fees

$3200 = put money in savings (to build up one month’s living expenses)

I made our license payment earlier this week and it amounted to $1569 ($1055 regular snowball payment + $500 June snowflake payment + 14 extra for the processing fee). This brought the total amount due to just under the $2500 mark (at one point this was over $10,000….though when I started blogging here in March it was just under $6,000). I’m excited to think/hope that the license will be paid in full by August AND that we will hopefully have enough set aside to start living off of last month’s income in the month of September! Fingers crossed!!!

How have you done on your budget lately? Left with “more month than money”? (< a Dave Ramsey saying) What are you doing to try to cut expenses and/or make more money?

Ashley

Hi, I’m Ashley! Arizonan on paper, Texan at heart. Lover of running, blogging, and all things cheeeeese. Freshly 40, married mother of two, working in academia. Trying to finally (finally!) pay off that ridiculous 6-digit student loan debt!