Year End Budget Review (part 3)
| 2011 Budget | 2011 Actual | 2012 Budget | |
| Student Loans | $ 685.00 | $ 1,087.00 | $ 685.00 |
| School | $ 850.00 | $ 781.00 | $ 850.00 |
| Bills | $ 2,135.00 | $ 2,183.00 | $ 2,190.00 |
| Car | $ 190.00 | $ 638.00 | $ 350.00 |
| Groceries | $ 450.00 | $ 401.00 | $ 350.00 |
| Medical | $ – | $ 25.00 | $ 25.00 |
| Eating Out | $ 150.00 | $ 159.00 | $ 150.00 |
| Allowance | $ 200.00 | $ 250.00 | $ 200.00 |
| Pets | $ – | $ 181.00 | $ 150.00 |
| House | $ – | $ 372.00 | $ 400.00 |
| Travel | N/A | N/A | $ – |
| MIL | $ – | $ – | $ (40.00) |
| Savings | $ 500.00 | $ 180.00 | $ 75.00 |
| Total | $ 5,160.00 | $ 6,257.00 | $ 5,385.00 |
It’s always intersting, to me, to see what I thought the financial picture was going to look like at the start of the year, what it really ended up looking like, and how I’m translating that into the new year.
When looking at my numbers, the important things for me to remember are that we have unemployment income for the first half of 2011 that was NOT included in the budget. It pretty much all went into paying on student loans.
We have had 3 (or more) people living in our house since last November. And until JZ moved in a couple weeks ago, there was no rent being paid or contributions to household bills (like groceries). This is not a complaint. We were happy to be able to help/host. But having someone who will be paying rent and contributing toward the grocery budget gives us some flex room.
The 2012 budget is not perfect, though. While it is certainly in budget if you count all 26 of my paychecks a year, I prefer to only count 24 and have the other two to go toward big paydowns on student loans or in to savings. There will almost certainly be tweaking as we move forward in the year.
In addition, I will almost certainly get a raise in April of about 3%. 1% of that will automatically go toward an icreased contribution to my 403(b), but that leaves 2% to help even things out. And there’s always a chance the C will decide to be done with school and get a job after he graduates this summer…
You seem to be doing well… one of the most important things is keeping track of where your spending your money. Congrats… and glad to be on Team 3 with you.
Thank you. I started tracking our finances back in 2003 (about the time we got married) but didn't take the next step to DOING something with that information until 2009 when C was laid off. Still, already having all that data made it a lot easier when we had to do something.
Really interesting. You have a significant portion of your budget going towards your student loans. Have you considered a graduated repayment plan, or an income based repayment plan? It might give you a little more flexibility in your monthly payments.
My undergrad loans are on graduated repayment- the amount increases every 2 years. I think I currently have budgeted to pay $50 more a month than my minimum for those. I thought I had put my graduate loans on graduated repayment back in late 2008 when my 6 month grace period was up. I thought it would work like with my undergrad loans (silly me), but it turns out Citi's version of graduated repayment was low payments for 2 years and then even payments afterwards. Sallie Mae has now bought those loans, so maybe I could change it, but I actually have those almost half paid, and I'd kind of like to be done with them sooner rather than later, so for now, I can make the payments work in our budget, so I'm sticking with it.
How thorough you are never ceases to amaze me (but you knew that already)! I love how you take a practical, objective look at everything you do and are able to be so rational with your money. I think I want to be you when I grow up!
It has nothing to do with my being practical or objective, and everything to do with the fact that I LOVE playing around in excel, so each year I need an excuse to change things up, so that I can created new forms and different graphs. I actually can't wait until January when I can do my end of year graph and compare it with previous years…
But honestly, when you're at a point where you don't know if the money is going to keep coming, but do know that if it stops, you start to lose everything, it creates a whole new relationship with your finances, a new outlook. We are lucky in that for both of us, our 9 months of crash budgeting wasn't just a temporary thing, it really did help us create a whole new lifestyle.
Everything seems to be going good – look at the progress you've made over expected on your student loans. That's much better than nothing!
Student loans are where we threw the unemployment money when we were getting ourselves ready to live on just my income. It did help make a very nice dent.
Jana said it best. At my house we try to be very careful with all our spending, but don't always keep such precise records. Good job.
[…] wrote this post, and then thought – hey wouldn’t it be great if I linked back to my original 2012 budget planning. Imagine my surprise when I looked at my plan and realized that $190 was my car budget/month in […]