So in order to look back, I want to track our budget month by month. If anyone has any tips or thoughts on where we can take money out for our debt snowball, feel free to let me know.
* We have $300 in a Health Savings Account or something (doesn't roll over year to year, but we can use it now... comes out pretax, each paycheck).
* Monthly take-home income is: $2793.28 I think it will go up because Phil changed his claims from 2 to 6 today... being married, having a child, etc.
* A " * " next to the category means we are using the Envelope System.
*Charitable Gifts: $50
Rent: $808
Renters Insurance: $13.08
Water/Sewer/Trash: $47.86 (changes by a few dollars every month)
Internet Service: $27.45 (Will go down to $20.45 in 6 months, we are paying $7/month for 10 months for our modem. I think we will cancel this as our neighbor lets us use hers and it works fine. We would have to pay off the modem, but that would save $20/month).
*Grocery: $330 (I've been playing with this number from $300-$350... $300 is now not enough with Charlotte using some formula for cereal, and $350 was too much last month).
Car Insurance: $77.22 (Right now this is only mine. Phil's would be $65 for everything or $45 for comprehensive).
*Repairs and Tires: $40.00
*Gas and Oil: $0 (We had almost $300 in here, so we put most of it towards our debt snowball. We usually budget about $250 since gas prices have gone down).
*Children's Clothing: $30
*Adults Clothing: $40
Health Insurance: $210.17
*Miscellaneous: $15
*Household: $120 (I have recently upped this the past few months from $100. It covers everything that is not food. Diapers, shampoo, lotion, etc.)
*Toys: $15
*Gifts (Including Christmas): $20 (We put a lot in last month, so I put less in this month).
*BLOW $: $25
*Pet Supplies: $30 (For dog food, toys, and vet visits).
Credit Card: $153 (Minimum just went down by $2, yay!)
MOHELA-Anna: $131.18
Direct Loans-Anna: $63.30
Direct Loans-Phil: $50
Hospital Bill: $100
Debt Snowball: $204.55
TOTAL: $2793.28
Beginning in March, we will have another loan to pay back. They had a 9 month grace period. One was Phil's which we paid off in January, the other is mine. I believe my minimum payment will be $50.
Feedback is always welcome!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Do your taxes, lol! We are getting a pretty nice check and it didn't take us that long. We still qualify for free turbo tax b/c we made under $30,000 (b/c Michael only had his real job for 6 months) and it's super easy, easy for filing jointly. You might qualify for the $600 tax rebate too, if you didn't get it last year. This is the link:
ReplyDeletehttp://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/
You can dump it directly into your checking account and it only takes 6-14 days, as opposed to 6-8 weeks.
I wondered this and maybe you can help me. What is the difference between the miscellaneous and the BLOW $$ category and what do/should you use for it? Is your focus to pay off the loans or the credit card right now? Thanks for this Anna, this really helps us getting ours figured out...especially b/c Michael makes a pretty similar total each month. I think mooching off someone else's internet is a great idea. That's what we're doing now, and most of the time it works great, only sometimes it's slow.
Sorry I didn't see the comment until today!
ReplyDeleteMy dads friend is actually an accountant so he's going to probably do our taxes. He does them for free, can't complain! Otherwise we'll use the Turbo Tax thing, thats what I did a few years ago.... thanks for the website :)
Ok for the difference between miscellaneous and Blow $$. Miscellaneous is for random things that come up that don't really fit into a category. For example, getting my drivers license (when I changed my name). Or if you had kids, paying the $5 for a field trip. The blow money is strictly for you to blow on yourself. Since we don't go out to eat (we decided to pay off debt instead of eat out), we often use the money to go eat. Or you could buy a nice candle you saw at the store and just had to have. Some couples do a "his" and a "her" blow envelope each month, but that didn't work very well for us. We just ended up putting money together to go out to eat. Does that make sense? Let me know if it doesn't.
We are doing our debt snowball, exactly as Dave recommends. We list all of our debts lowest to highest, regardless of interest, and pay off the lowest one. If two are very close and one has higher interest, pay off the higher interest one first. Our credit card is in the middle of all the student loans, so it'll get paid off in the middle. Same with our hospital bill (that has no interest).
Glad you agree with the internet. Its actually our friend, and she gave us her password :). But, we used to live off of the guys upstairs, then they moved out :(. That would save us $20 a month, so I think I'm going to call and cancel it the next few days. I need to make sure its ok with Phil first, his computer doesn't have a wireless card, but we don't really ever use it.
I really hope that I could help. Let me know if you ever have any questions!