2016 starts tomorrow, and even if I do spend some more money today, the transaction wouldn’t go through until next month (or next year!!) so I can do the budget review today.
This will be the last budget and review that I do this way. I’ve decided that having all these actual cash numbers out on the internet for the world to see makes me a little nervous, so I’m going to move to a different format for the new year, which I will share with you “next year”! (It never gets old!) But I figure I would finish off with this final review before switching it up.
So, let’s get started… To put it simply… We did the classic holiday overspend. We spent more on gifts that we had in the budget, bought lots of food and drink for all the celebrations, and went out with friends and family more than we had budgeted for. Lucky for us, we have a buffer and using the YNAB software we can move things around to make it hurt a little less, and it just means that our available budget for January is smaller. No problem… The benefits of living off last month’s income and keeping rainy day funds in a lot of categories.
The big four categories are planned spending, mortgage, groceries and misc. (“Misc” is where the gifts category is held…) Planned spending is big because we bought our airplane tickets for some traveling that we are doing in January. I also decided to get my wedding dress cleaned so I can attempt to sell it… probably not the smartest move… since the cleaning is going to cost almost as much as the dress itself… Oh well.
Our mortgage is always one of the major categories… and I’ve already discussed how we went over in our food & drink, and with our gifts… I don’t need to repeat myself…
Normally the next step is to go through all the numbers from this month and discuss what I have budgeted for the next month. While we will continue to use YNAB to do our budgeting, I’m not going to share the numbers… but I’ll share the numbers from December:
You can see two red categories in this list… the food & drink as I already mentioned… and the misc. category that is over budget because of gifts…
Other than that… there isn’t much to discuss there… Kind of a boring post… sorry…
Well, let’s just give an overview snapshot of the spending for 2015 (since April when we started with YNAB)…
We can see the fun celebratory months are always more expensive. June was the start of summer and the women’s world cup in Vancouver… plus we got our roof done… July was the continuation of the world cup, plus birthdays and summer trips… August was Taylor Swift in Seattle and our wedding… The fall was quiet for us… I was away for work for most of it… and then you can see the fun start up again in December… I can only imagine how much extra we’d have in savings if we made every month like the fall months… but then we’d miss out on all the fun!!!
Anyway, not the most exciting budget post… but it is time for me to go celebrate new year’s eve, so that’s all I’m writing for today.
Wishing everyone a safe and happy new year’s eve, and all the best for 2016! See you next year!
**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.
All-Round Better Me 
So have you tried the new YNAB? What do you think? I’ve been test driving it for a couple days, and I absolutely love it!
LikeLike
New YNAB? Not sure. I downloaded my version in April 2015… Is that the new version?
LikeLike
They just released a new version last week. It’s web-based, full of new features, and it’s now offered as a yearly subscription ($45) instead of a one-time fee. Sounds like they’ll continue to support the classic YNAB through 2016.
LikeLike
That is really too bad that they are moving to a yearly subscription… Part of why I liked it was it was a one time reasonable price… So, no, I’m using the classic version.
LikeLike
And from all I’ve read the classic version will work basically forever, so you’re covered 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m impressed by your money tracking skills. You’re really on top of your spending.
LikeLike
It’s all in the YNAB software… It makes it so easy and then you have pretty graphs and reports to look at.
LikeLike
Happy New Year! I like using percentages when I do my reviews/round-ups. It gets the point across without overly giving exact details.
LikeLike
Yeah, I started with percentages back at the beginning of 2015… but then I didn’t like the way I was doing my budgeting or my reporting… so I switched it up… but now that I am doing everything in YNAB, it is so easy… I might go back to percentages in 2016… or I might just totally switch it up…
LikeLike
Happy New Year!! I admire how incredibly organized you are with your budgeting and spending. It’s awesome!
LikeLike
Seriously, YNAB does all the work for me. If you haven’t tried it out, they offer a free trial, and apparently there is a newer version than the one I’m using… definitely worth a look. It makes it so easy to stay organized with keeping track of money and spending.
LikeLike