September 2016 Financial Update

Probably because growing up it meant school starting again, but for whatever reason, September always means the end of summer to me, even though technically it is still summer for a few weeks.  And with the end of summer comes a new focus to get organized and productive for the remaining 4 months of the year.  Hopefully that will also lead in to a focus on reducing spending because the summer months are typically very “spendy” and this summer was no exception.

August Spending

I’ve mentioned already that we have spent quite a bit of money on the new addition to our family.  I’m sure we could find cheaper ways to get the training and care that we are getting, but I am supporting a friend’s business with a lot of it, so I am happy to do it.

Anyway, the goal remains the same: to keep our monthly spending below the average of last year, which was $7700 per month.  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).  Although, I guess we could argue that buying a dog is special spending… Oh well, I didn’t classify it as that.  Anyway, this month we came in at $10,000.  No comment…

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August 2016 Financial Update

The beginning of a new month always sneaks up on me.  How does time go by so quickly?!?

Anyway, here we are at the beginning of August, so it is time once again to go over where we stand financially and check in with my financial goals for 2016.

July Spending

Can I just skip this section of the post?  I don’t really want to admit how much we spent this month… I thought that last month was bad… And we beat that one by a fair margin…

Okay, if I can’t skip this portion of the post, I best just get on with it.  The goal that I made at the beginning of the year was to keep our monthly spending below the average of last year, which was $7700 per month.  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).  This month we came in at $8500.

So, what did we spend all that money on?  Well, a variety of things that we had been putting off were purchased this month… We stocked up on some stuff that we only buy every few months… And there were a few birthdays this month (mine included), so there was quite a bit spent on gifts.  Oh, and a decent chunk was spent on something that I will be announcing here on the blog next week.  So, nothing was really too crazy, and I don’t feel bad about any one category or anything, it was just a spendy month.

It was even spendy compared to July 2015.  The total for July 2015 was $8100.  So we even beat that one out with this July.  All we can do now is work on spending less for August and the rest of the year.

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

July 2016 Financial Update

Another month has come and gone… And this one was a bit of a spendy month… But, it still meant an increase in our net worth, so that’s a win, right?  But let’s go over the details.

June Spending

For only the second month this year (the other month was February), we have gone over the monthly average from last year of $7700.  This average excludes any planned spending and any contributions to our RRSPs or TFSAs because those are technically savings.  This is just for our regular living expenses (mortgage, bills, food & drink, etc).

Last month we were close to going over, but managed to stay just under at about $7400.  This month, however, we went over by around $500.  I know that we had one major expense that happens annually, I renewed my car insurance.  That comes in at just over $1000 for the year, so without that we would have been under… Perhaps another argument for the one car experiment to become permanent?

June Spending

 

How does this month compare to last year?  Looking back in history… If we ignore all the planned spending that we did last year for our wedding (that would definitely make August  2015 the most expensive month), June 2015 was the most expensive month of our entire YNAB history.  Even going over our goal this month, we are still much better off with the $8200 of June this year, than the $9700 total for June last year.  Of course, I am pretty sure that some of the purchases made in June 2015 were classified incorrectly and may have belonged in planned spending (which I don’t count in this total because those are special planned expenses that are saved for)… but I’m not about to go back and change things now…

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

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:

May 2016 Financial Update

So, we didn’t really get a financial update for April, so this post will sort of do double duty…  Also, small side note, is it totally insane that it is already May?!?  This year is just flying by!

March & April 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).

Both March and April came in well below the $7700 line.  I would like to say that this is because we have turned a new leaf and have become amazingly better and keeping our spending down, but that is definitely not the case.  As I will discuss a little further down, it is because we were away for a large portion of both months and all the spending we did while we were away came out of the honeymoon budget which is “planned spending” and not included in this total.

March & April Spending

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.

February 2016 Financial Update

My plan this year is to do a financial update post once a month to go over my progress (or lack thereof) on my financial goals for 2016.  I will include a little summary of my budget/spending for the previous month, since I have stopped sharing my monthly budget and spending like I did last year.

January Spending

Even though I didn’t post this as one of my goals for 2016, I am really hoping that we can keep our monthly spending below last year’s average each month.  In computing this average, I didn’t take any of the planned spending in to account (the wedding really would have messed up the average) and I didn’t include our contributions to our RRSPs, which really aren’t 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.  January was $6000, so success for January.  Though to be fair, we did spend a week away, so that cost comes from the travel fund (planned spending) and might have decreased our normal food & drink costs.

January 2016 Spending

Goal #3 – Emergency Fund

I updated my financial goals section on my sidebar yesterday, so my emergency fund status bar is up to date.  If you look closely, you’ll see it is at $2500 (exactly where it was at the beginning of the year), which of course means that I haven’t actually put any more in to it since the beginning of the year… So, no progress on this one yet.

December 2015 Budget Review

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.

November Budget Review & December Budget Preview

Another month has finished, so it is time for yet another budget review and preview post.  We are starting the last month of 2015, so this will be my last post like this for the year.  That means that I’ve met my goal of budgeting every month for the entire year! Woohoo!  🙂

Before I get started on reviewing November, I wanted to revisit October quickly… I made mention in my review of our October spending that I had business expenses that would be reimbursed and I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with them in YNAB.  I ended up splitting the reimbursement payment in to two so that the expenses in October were covered by part of the payment, and the ones I paid for in November were covered by the other part of it.  It makes it not 100% match my bank statements, but it makes the summary numbers for the month make more sense.  I’m not going to update that post, but our spending for the month of October looks much nicer now and is under $8000, and it also makes it so our “overspending” in October went down so it now looks like we didn’t budget everything in November…

Okay, so now for the spending numbers for November…

October Budget Review & November Budget Preview

October was a crazy month for me.  Not only was it a three pay cheque month for me, but I was pretty much away for work the entire month for work, so I worked a ton of overtime.  It definitely inflated our income for November’s budget and has helped to complete a few of my financial goals.

I was extremely proud of how low our spending was in September, and while October seems to have been a bit more expensive according to the YNAB numbers, it includes some work expenses that will be reimbursed once I submit my receipts, and we are still miles below the summer months.  I’m very happy about that… but I have to take it with a grain of salt… I was away for work almost the entire month, so I didn’t really have any opportunity to spend… and our food budget is really only for one person (my husband) for most of the month… so we’ll have to see how things work once I’m home again… whenever that is…