June 2015 Budget Review & July 2015 Budget

I’ve been dreading writing this post… I know we spent a lot in June… and I knew I was going to have to explain it… so I’ve been putting it off… but I guess it’s time to get it done…

First, the pretty graph:

 

Yes, that huge number in the middle is our total spending for June… over $ XXXXX**!!!  Some was planned spending, but still… the number is crazy high!

This month we took the YNAB concept of rolling with the punches to the extreme… and then ended up using some of our emergency fund to pay for things that came up… So the values that we originally budgeted at the beginning of the month are quite a bit different from what the ended up as… Here’s what the numbers look like now:

 

Let’s discuss it…

1. Mortgage: original June budget = $ XXXX**, now = $ XXXX**.  The mortgage category is never an exciting one, but this month I took all the extra money that I could from this category to fill up other ones… For July I’ve kept it right at the minimum amount required.

2. Utilities & Home Insurance:  original June budget = $ XXX**, now = $ XX**.  We didn’t spend any money from this category this month, so I decreased the amount budgeted by a lot in order to move money around and cover other expenses… For July, I know that we’ll have to actually spend some money from this category, but I’m really hoping that the amount that we already have in the “fund” will be enough to cover it…

3. RRSP & TFSA:  original June budget = $ XXX**, now = $ XXX**.  I increased my RRSP contributions this month.  Otherwise this category is very boring… we budget exactly what we transfer to RRSPs.

4. Planned Spending / Saving: original June budget = $ XXXX**, now = -$ XXXX**… yeah, that’s a negative number… This is where the emergency fund took a hit in order to pay for other things that came up… And yes, you are reading that outflow value correctly, it is very high!  We paid for our new roof this month, and also a bunch of travel and wedding stuff… In July, I hope that we can put back $ XXX** to the emergency fund… but most likely it will be spent on various little trips we have planned…

5. Life Insurance, Medical & Family Expenses:  original June budget = $ XXX**, now = $ XXX**.  Again we moved things around to cover other expenses… and then we used up some of the “fund” to pay for things this month… which is what it is for… but it always hurts to draw those down.  Nothing exciting in terms of spending this month… Just regular stuff… bumped up the amount in July in order to fill up the “funds” again…

6. Cable, Cell Phones & Internet:  original June budget = $ XXX**, now = $ XXX**.  Just a small adjustment on this one… and just the regular expenses this month… same expected for next month… not exciting.

7. Car Insurance, Maintenance & Gas:  original June budget = $ XXX**, now = $ XXXX**.  This is where some of the money got moved to… I had to renew my car insurance this month… but I didn’t bring the proper documentation to start up the monthly payments like I had planned, so I had to lump sum the year’s worth of car insurance.  Poor planning on my part… On the plus side, now I have a whole year without worrying about it… I’ve scheduled to take my car in for maintenance in July, so depending on what happens there, we may have some extra expenses eating away at the “fund” in July.

8. Groceries, Eating Out & Liquor:  original June budget = $ XXXX**, now = $ XXXX**.  Another category that went over and needed to be funded from other parts of the budget… We don’t to a very good job of keeping this spending down, and while I know that a lot of this has to do with traveling, we need to be better.  We are going to concentrate on keeping this category low this month.  I have only given us $ XXXX** for July, so it’ll be tight.

9. Household Goods & Toiletries:  original June budget = $ XXX**, now = $ XXX**.  We were too busy to do as many household projects this month, which is lucky since we needed this money to cover other categories.  I doubt we’ll have much time in July for anything substantial, so I’ve only put in the bare minimum.

10. Fitness & Sports:  original June budget = $ XX**, now = $ XX**.  Some hockey expenses for the fiance required a bit more money than originally budgeted.  I haven’t put anything in to the July budget for this… which is probably a mistake… but we’ll see…

11. Clothing & Personal Care:  original June budget = $ XXX**, now = $ XXX**.  We bought some Canada apparel to wear to the Women’s World Cup, which was not originally budgeted for.

12. Misc.:  original June budget = $ XXX**, now = $ XXXX**.  Yup… this is where there was a huge overage… one part of it was a traffic ticket that the fiance got… then a bunch of random entertainment expenses that we probably didn’t need… but the big one was my fiance’s daughter’s birthday surprise… we waited a little late to buy some concert tickets, which means that the price went up way more than we had expected.  If we had been smart, we probably would have changed our plans once we saw what it was going to cost… but instead we just went ahead with it, rearranged some numbers, and stole from our emergency fund… bad bad bad.  And we still have baby and wedding gifts to purchase in July and August…

(Missing here is #13.  As I explained last month, I moved my slush fund money in to other categories and removed it from the budget…)

So there you have it, our crazy June of spending!  And it won’t stop there… July and August will both be crazy spendy as well, but hopefully we won’t have to dip in to the emergency fund anymore… Our income in June was down a bit, so hopefully I’ll get some overtime work in July to increase our income and make up for some of these expenses.

How spendy was your June?  Did you stay within your budget?

**Edit:  I have decided that I don’t want to share my actual numbers on the blog, so I have removed them from this post… Sorry if it makes it a bit confusing or unreadable… Hopefully it isn’t unbearably so.

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