January 2010 Budget Report

Here is our budget from January:


January turned out to be a pretty good month, all considered. Here is how it all went down:

• I was off in estimating what my income this month would be. I forgot to take into account the reimbursement for my work travel. And then I was unsure how the 10% would affect my paychecks not to mention the increase in health insurance costs and the new deduction for this year's HSA. So I estimated but I was off a few hundred dollars.
• I didn't transfer all money to the emergency fund that I had budgeted. That's because the January 31st paycheck needs to go to the mortgage and truck payment which are both due in early February. So I'm holding that money in our checking account until the next payday (February 12th) and then I'll make a big transfer. No point in draining our checking account and risking an overdraft fee!
• Our other spending was pretty well in check. We were over in the gas, household and restaurant budgets (as usual) but under in groceries and discretionary and we came out $17.35 ahead for the flexible spending portion of our budget.
  
• Overall we have $565.90 left from this month's budget, mainly due to not transferring everything to the emergency fund.
  

Jamison's third birthday is at the beginning of February. I've budgeted $100 for his gift, cake and groceries for his family birthday party. To make sure we have the cash available for this special event, I'm going to reserve $150 from that January budget extra for February's budget. This is $50 more than what we have budgeted for Jamison but there's another special event (my cousin's wedding on the 13th) that we'll have to buy a gift for as well. Our budget is pretty tight now and this extra money would have had to come from somewhere. Chuck and I chose this route. That means we'll have $415.90 to send to savings. Of that $415.90, I'm going to send $100 to the Christmas savings account (which is being otherwise completely ignored in January and February) and the rest, $315.90, to the emergency fund.

This was kind of an exhausting month trying to keep track of all the money going in every which direction. I'm hoping February is a bit more simple. Chuck and I sat down tonight and reviewed the budget for February. We'll both have to watch our spending pretty closely to make sure we stay under budget. It will be a challenge.