June 2016 Financial Update

I can’t believe how fast time goes… I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting older?  In any case, another month has flown by, and so it is once again time to review our spending and finances to see where we are…

May Spending

One of my unofficial goals of the year is to maintain our monthly spending below the average of $7700 from last year (average is technically only from April onward, but let’s not worry about that).  For this, I don’t take any of the planned spending in to account and I don’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 May spending did come in under $7700, but only by a very small margin… Summer months are always more spendy for us, and with the weather we’ve been having this May, it has definitely felt like an early summer.  Hopefully we can rein in the spending in the next couple months to not blow the $7700 cap…

May Spending

I mentioned last update that we had now been using YNAB for a year, so I can compare this year to last year, finally!  So, compared to May of 2015… We spent less in May of 2015 than we did this year, but not my much…  However, our big spending category (food & drink) was down by over $100 from last year… so that’s an improvement anyway…

 And now for a quick recap of my finance-related goals for 2016:

Goal #3 – Emergency Fund

Because of the tax refund that we got this month, we were able to put a bit more in the emergency fund.  As of June 1st, we have $3000 in our emergency fund.  Only $7000 left to make the goal of $10,000.  If we put in $1000 each month we’ll make it by the end of the year!  I guess that’s the amount I’ll aim for each month now.

Goal #4 – Save for Planned Spending

Our income in May was up (since we didn’t take half the month off like we did in March and April), so we were also able to contribute to our other savings goals.  But I still haven’t made myself a new spread in my bullet journal, so I have attempted to update the old one… But it really isn’t that clear…

Goal #5 – Net Worth & Retirement Savings

We finally have an increase in our net worth from the beginning of the year.  Of course, it is really because our planned spending accounts are up… but since that money is all going to be spent at some point, I really don’t know if I should be including it… and the net worth will definitely be coming down once we spend that money… Oh well, I will bask in the glory of an increase for now.

So, we have a 2% net worth increase since the beginning of 2016!  Woohoo!  We are still 10% away from where I wanted us to get to by the end of 2016, and the distribution isn’t nearly what I was trying for, but there is time still…

 

Goal #6 – Mortgage Renewal & Account Consolidation

I haven’t done anything on this since the last update… I should really get started on the next steps in my plan…

How was your May financially?  

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