Honestly, the month of November was a blur! It has not been the easiest month personally because my grandfather has cancer and any day will be his last. I've been making lots of trips back and forth to "home" with the baby in tow. It's a three hour drive each way but worth every minute of it to see my grandfather and be there for my mom and grandma as they live through this experience on a daily basis taking care of him in his own house.
On to the budget... November's funds were kind of crazy. We started out by blowing through all but a couple hundred in the first week and half! But then we had almost one hundred left at the end of the month. Weird huh?
November's Budget Recap:
- Food - bulk food and meat for two months bought at the beginning of the month meant we had about $20-$25 to fill in the gaps for the month (ie. milk and yogurt)
- Cell Phone Bill- We always have lots of extra minutes at the end of the month, but this month with all the calls to home (and received from home) we blew through the minutes and then some. We were WAY over budget on that bill.
- We were under budget on gas because we planned for prices to go up.
- Had to cut Mr's new jeans out of the budget.
- Used the date night funds and beer funds as intended. It was a nice treat!
Overall we did good this month. After the first week we did have to re adjust sightly but after that we stayed right on track.
December's Budget:
Here is what we are doing in December.
- Add line item for daughter's commissions (aka, chore money)
- Added extra for the gifts for the 5 family member's with birthday's this month
- Adding some extra towards Christmas gifts
- Surprise Doctor Bill- Why a surprise? Because we maxed out our out of pocket expense portion back in March. One of the three doctors our baby saw last month at the special clinic doesn't take our insurance so it was considered out-of-network. We were not expecting this since all the other doctors were covered by insurance. That ate up just shy of $100 of this month's funds.
'08 Budget Goals:
- Fully fund retirement- partially funded via work 401k, not adding to Roth until after the new roof funds are fully saved
- Fund college savings again. - adding this month
- Save for new roof- continuing and should be have enough funds by spring
How well does your budget work? What are your problem areas?
2 comments:
I am sorry to hear your grandfather has cancer. Spending as much time with him as you can is defiantly a budget necessity. The way I see it, we scrimp and save and manage our money wisely so when something like this happens money isn't an issue.It would be terrible to lose out on those last months with a loved one because it either wasn't in the budget or you simply didn't have the funds at all.
thats exactly it, Tosha. For many this would be an emergency. Unplanned, spent all the money on Christmas gifts, time to whip out the credit card!
As Dave always says in FPU, when you get your act together financially, you stop having emergencies. Not that things don't happen, but what constitutes an emergency is much more severe than before.
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