October 2016 Financial Update

So… Have you missed me?  I can’t believe that it has been a full three weeks since my last post.  Sorry about that!  I had a bunch of drafts started to post while I went away to my friend’s wedding, but then prep for that got busy, and so all the blog plans went out the window… And of course, the moment we got home from that, both my husband and I came down with what we are nicknaming the “death cold”.  Today is the first day that I have even attempted to be human (not just a lump on the couch).  So, it’s a bit late, but here’s my financial update for the beginning of October.

September Spending

With all the wedding travel expenses coming out of our planned spending accounts, September managed to be a better month in terms of regular spending.  We came in just under the goal of $7700 (the average of last year).  This includes our mortgage, utilities and normal monthly costs, but didn’t count special spending that we saved up for (planned spending as I call it).

We managed to decrease our food and drink budget by about a third, and without the initial pet costs of the puppy, that category of expenses dropped by more than half.

Last year, September was the first month we buckled down after a summer of celebrating, so we had an amazing low expense total of $6300.  The $7600 of this year seems pretty high compared to that, but I’ll just be happy with being under the target of $7700.

 

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

Goal #3 – Emergency Fund

We added another $1000 to the emergency fund, so we are sitting at $8500.  Only $1500 left to reach this goal. This is the easiest goal to track!

Goal #4 – Save for Planned Spending

Lots of spending from our travel funds in September, although some of it won’t come through on the cards until October.  Although, I think the total spending will come out under the estimates that I had for our trips in September, which is good news, since we have a few smaller weekend trips planned for October.  Hopefully what is left there will cover that.

We got the exterior of our house painted finally, and so a big chunk of money will be leaving the home reno fund for that… I haven’t really added much to the fund this month, but we have a new plan… So I’ll discuss that in another post.

I’ve mentioned before that I am finding it hard to track my planned spending goals because they never seem to follow the order that I originally plan…  The key is that we are saving up for these expenses, and when we spend, we aren’t going in to debt for any of them.  So, this page in my bullet journal might not be the best… but here it is updated:

Goal #5 – Net Worth & Retirement Savings

After being above my total goal back in August, the spending of the cash savings has been slowly decreasing the total, so we are back below the target again… but not by much.

Goal #6 – Mortgage Renewal & Account Consolidation

We have met with a couple different people to discuss mortgage options, and we are getting our house appraised next week to hopefully free up some equity to finish up some of the bigger renovations that we have planned, so things are moving along quickly here… I’ll have to put together some more detailed posts about all of this stuff in the next couple weeks.  Stay tuned…

How did your September go financially? 

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