June Budget Breakdown

Midway through July, and I’m barely summarizing June’s Budget. Let’s start with how we did with our June goals:

1. Reduce our grocery spending back down to $350 or less. FAIL. But we were close! We spent $385.77 and it’s a vast improvement from what we’ve been spending recently.
2. Spend less money than what we bring in. If you don’t include our trip, then we made it under budget. So let’s just count this as even…?
3. Find an extra $200 in the budget so I can buy some new clothes. Haven’t bought anything for myself in such a long time, and I seriously need some clothes. WIN! Although I spent $330 on clothes this month for both Eric and myself, bringing this year’s total spent on clothing to $640! That’s how much I used to spend in a month when I was single!
4. Get to over 90% of our $8,000 Aug. 15 savings goal! SO CLOSE! WIN! We ended the month with $7500 in our savings account, marking us at 94%

2 out of 4? not bad!

The Good

• We only spent half ($150!) of our gas budget (not including our trip).
• We only spent $75 on dining out! (not including our trip)

The Bad

• We spent $222 this month on gifts. With Father’s Day, a bridal shower and a birthday–these things accumulate! My plan is to start buying less expensive gifts and hope no one notices 🙂
• Including hotel and transportation, we spent $1210.41 on our trip. It was a fabulous trip and very much needed, but I always wish we would spend a little less.  Our budget was $500 (about $100 a day), not including hotel ($410) and gas ($about 140) so I guess we didn’t do too bad.

The Ugly

• Nothing too ugly, but in order to pay for our vacation, we don’t plan on contributing anything toward our savings this month. No biggie because we’re still set to reach our goal by August 15th!

Here’s some info that may affect our budget in the future:

• Why do we need $8,000 in our savings account? Since January, we’ve been planning to save $8,000 for the four months Eric would be unemployed from late August to December when he is in the fire academy. We figured $8,000 is what we would need to get by (and also changing my tax witholdings).   We have been saving almost 20% of our income each month. BUT–because God always likes to have some fun with our plans–it turns out, we may not need this money to cover Eric’s unemployment…
• Eric’s Job Future. Currently, there may be a new job opportunity for Eric. We don’t have any information right now as to when the job would begin and it is SO frustrating because Eric needs to let the academy know if he won’t be able to attend. He may need to push back his start date, or go part time. It’s unclear. Obviously, securing this job is #1 priority but we don’t want to lose the opportunity and also lose the academy. I hope everything gets cleared up by the end of this month.
• AND if Eric does get the job, then that means those $8,000? 1) Pay off my CAR!!! and 2) Take a BIG Trip! and then start saving and reducing debt…again.

So there’s a lot of uncertainty right now and it’s driving me BATTY! I like plans and charts and color coded pie-charts.

Goals for July

1. Reduce our grocery spending to $350.
2. Figure out what’s going on with Eric’s job/academy.
3. Pay off our vacation by not contributing to savings this month.
4. Make extra $ this month by selling stuff online.

How do you make extra money online?  How is your budget going?

*image found here