March 2016 Financial Update

I was really hoping that I’d have a more positive post than last month, but no such luck.  In any case, here is my March update…

February Spending

I mentioned in my update last month that I had an unofficial goal of keeping our monthly spending below last year’s average each month.  For this, I won’t take any of the planned spending in to account and I won’t include our contributions to our RRSPs or TFSAs, which really are savings, not expenses…  This is just for our regular month-to-month living spending (mortgage, bills, food & drink, etc).

Our average monthly spending last year was about $7700.  February blew that out of the water, with a total of about $9300.  To be fair, that included the expensive dental surgery for Big Cat, and also our annual home insurance renewal, so it would already be above a “normal” month… but I think we also spent too much on food & drink…

February Spending

 

Goal #3 – Emergency Fund

As I discussed earlier in the month, we had to use some of our emergency fund to pay for Big Cat’s dental procedure.  The balance on this is now down to only $900, so my goal of $10,000 just got a bit harder…

Goal #4 – Save for Planned Spending

Unfortunately, not much to report on this goal this month.  Because of the high spending and use of the emergency fund, there wasn’t much that could be allocated to the planned spending goals… However, I also had some work expenses in February, which should get paid back to me in March, so that might boost the available cash for savings in March.

Goal #5 – Net Worth & Retirement Savings

I thought our net worth went down a lot in January, but with all the hits to our cash savings, and poor market performance, our net worth went way down this month… A decrease of almost 8%… Not much we can do, except keep saving… Here’s our updated graph:

Goal #6 – Mortgage Renewal & Account Consolidation

I posted my to-do list for this goal on Tuesday this week.  So some progress has been made, in the form of a plan… Now to get working on it…

How did February treat you?  Did you have a bit of a sad month financially like me?

Advertisement