Budget Update...

Well, it's 'that' time. ;) I've patiently been waiting for October to roll around, and now that it's here, we're $375/month poorer. Dallas turned 18 last week which officially means he's a "man" and we should no longer 'have' to support him. Our CCTB has taken a big drop and we're adjusting our budget to accommodate for it. We're hoping that Dallas finds a job sooner than later as well because it would be nice if he could pay for his own "stuff" and chip in a little bit for what he uses the most. (Expensive Internet!! Grr!!)

We've been over the budget a million few times and have come up with our new budget which will stay in effect until April when our budget drops by another $100 when Mya turns 6.

Our fixed bills come to $1737.50 a month. This does not include any "extra's" such as guitar lessons, language lessons, etc... just the basics ma'am! I'll need to continue saving up for Morgan's guitar lessons and Rosetta Stone lessons. We've decided to bump her down to 1/2 hr. lessons after Christmas to save a bit of money. Each lesson would then be $20/30 minutes instead of $30/45 minutes. We are paying $20/month for Rosetta Stone lessons but those will be over & done with after Christmas. Dropping down to 1/2 hr lessons will be a little less stressful for me as I really honestly know how much extra income i'll be able to bring in each month. If I don't bring in enough income, it has to be pulled from our weekly budget, and there's not really a lot to go around there.

We're also keeping our automatic deductions coming out from hubbys paychecks and plan on using that for our "Summer Vacation" fund along with hubbys income tax refund. We're hoping to have enough saved by next summer to take the kids away for a weekend somewhere fun & family oriented!

So, after our fixed bills are set aside and accounted for we have $1478 a month to cover absolutely everything else. Food, clothes, savings, meds, gifts, incidentals, etc... After I divide this into 4 weeks it gives us $369.00 a week! This is more than what I had hoped for because we found 2 places to cut back.

1. I'm canceling my sons cell phone. He's not working yet, and doesn't seem to overly appreciate it, and never wants to chip in for it when he does have money, so that'll save us $15/month. When he gets a job he can buy himself a spiffy smart phone and enjoy it on his dime.
2. Hubby think's it would be cheaper to go with 5 strips of bus tickets each month ($47.50) instead of $81.00 for a monthly bus pass. So we're going to try it and see if it's a viable way for us to save $33.50 a month.

I've looked through our budget and besides cutting back cable & internet, (which we aren't doing right now) there really isn't anything else to do but watch our hydro/gas/water bills and try to stay under on them!!

 

Here's how we're going to 'dole out' the $369.00 each week.

 

• Emergency Fund: $65.00 until Jan.1st. (After Jan 1st, $25/week of this will turn into Xmas savings, and the $40/week will go to our EF)
• $4.00 a week will just sit in our main account to go along with our $2K buffer that offsets our bank fee's. Otherwise we'd be paying just under $13.00/month for bank fee's! OUCH!!!
• $300 a week will be to cover food, gifts, clothes, misc, entertainment, charity, pet stuff, etc... instead of breaking up this $300 into seperate categories each week, hubby & I will have a "mini meeting" to see what is "up & coming" and where the money will need to be used.

For example, this week hubby actually found 3 pairs of jeans that he likes and will wear in his size. This is a blessing!! lol! He NEVER finds jeans that he feels comfortable in and likes, so I told him to grab all 3 pairs. He goes through them like crazy because he wears them at work. So, that's $80 off of the top of our budget this week that we normally wouldn't spend on clothes each week. This seems to work better for us, that way i'm not stressing out that we went over our "clothing" budget for the week, we just "fit it in" and go from there. We'll be doing this each week and see how it goes. I do plan on tracking where our $$ goes again though, so each week I plan to post where our $$ was spent. It'll help me to see where it's going and that we're not spending 'recklessly'. I also plan on getting back on track with my Thursday budget posts as they help keep me on track as well.

 

I haven't even really looked in our account this week, so i'm going to do that shortly and see what we're working with for the week and go from there. After the girls being sick and spending on this & that without tracking, I don't think we'll be working with much this week. I'll post our budget for the next week later on today. For now I need to get it in gear and be productive around here!! ;)