Gas is Expensive!: With a full quarter of the year gone, it’s time for a quick budget review. The area where I seem most off so far this year is on car expenses. I budgeted $190/month, to include paying for insurance and setting money aside for repairs. Right now, I look at this and think “where did I come up with my numbers?” Insurance itself is over $100/month, even though we pay every 6 months. That would leave less than $90 for gas each month. In the last two weeks, I’ve spent $120 on gas. How did I think maintenance fees were coming out of that, as well?

Now, I’ll admit that one of those fill ups included an extra 7.5 gallons in the gas cans, but still, it’s getting ridiculous. This morning, I paid $4.19/gallon for regular unleaded. At least our B99 has remained steady all winter at $4/gallon, even as regular diesel as jumped around.

That’s right, it is now cheaper for me to fill up my expensive TDI VW on B99 bio-diesel than it is to put a tankful of regular unleaded in my old Chevy. One of the reasons we went with the diesel and chose bio-diesel (besides being better for the environment) was that the price, while more expensive, was less volatile. I guess it’s an added bonus now that it’s actually cheaper, and still less volatile.

Making Changes: All this complaining aside, it means I need to rejigger my budget. Luckily, I’m getting a raise that will show up on my April 27 paycheck, and we finished paying off the basement work this month. To top it off, we don’t owe insurance again until September and are not moving all that quickly toward another service on the VW (also expensive). We replaced tires on both cars last year, so shouldn’t have that expense anytime soon, either.

But $190/month is not cutting it. I think I may need to raise it to $250.

On a bright note, we’re spending slightly less than budgeted on groceries and eating out, and I’m pretty much right on target with C’s school costs.

Glad I'm not paying to heat this place

Blogger’s Note (aka I’m an idiot):

I 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 2011, and that my plan was to budget $350/month in 2012.

I know I figured my automatic savings based off the spreadsheet I created that post from, and it included the amount “extra” I thought needed to go into savings for insurance and car repair. We’ve been saving that amount each month without an issue.

So apparently, I just forgot to update my budgeted amount on the spreadsheet where I track actual spending. And since I budgeted $350/month, we’re actually doing fabulous on our car budget.

Now I just have to wonder what else I forgot to update.

Time for a closer review of my spreadsheets tomorrow.