Thursday, October 27, 2016

Where we went over budget

We made repairs to one of our cars this week.  Though it may look like an overage, we actually had money to spare in our car repair fund, which felt nice.  Where we really did go over, again, was in my husband's clothing spending.  He had to get a new pair of boots for work, so once again, we are still over on that budget this month.  When things get to be a persistent problem, I will realign our budget based on actual spending averages from the previous twelve months. I tweak it a bit each month as I evaluate our spending, but every once in a while, I do more of an overhaul.  You will see that reflected in next month's budget.
There is only so much room to tweak sometimes, as I want to keep our top priorities on the top, and not have them swallowed up in things that are less important to us.  One thing that I've noticed is that while my goal was to have all of our extra earnings going towards student loans and working on the house, it really hasn't been happening over the last several months.  That extra money (about $400 on average per month) just sort of disappears.  Because of that, last month I decided that I would go ahead and schedule extra payments on the student loan for a preset amount, based on what I believe we should be able to afford.  If it comes down to it in a pinch, I can always cancel the payment if we really don't have the funds for it that month without any worry about ruining our credit, since it is not a mandatory payment.  However, for me, since it is scheduled and expected, the money will be less likely to disappear.  Perhaps I should do the same for a regular payment to our home improvement savings, but I think just the idea of actually getting some work done on the house will be enough of a motivator to put the money aside.

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