I’m over budget again in September (that’s two months in a row after a really great under budget streak). It’s not too bad because I had to pay my semi-annual car insurance premium and my annual car registration this month. I have an ING subaccount set up to save for car expenses like that and transfer money to it from each paycheck so while I did have to put out about $550 for those expenses all at once, I had already saved up for them and they weren’t coming out of my everyday checking account.
This month Mint fixed the issue of transfers between my accounts (especially credit card payments) counting towards my budget. So I have a good overview of how I’m doing once again.
I’m still not liking how mint.com is set up to budget for expenses that don’t occur monthly but I’m loving the Everything Else category so right now I’m trying a super flexible method of budgeting. I have my total budget number in mind and my only fixed expense month to month is my rent. I’ve got my rent separated out from the rest of the budget but everything else is in the appropriately titled Everything Else category now which is budgeted at my total monthly number minus my rent. (In the planning tab you can see how your spending breaks down within that Everything Else category.) I currently have it set to roll over extra money month to month so we can see how that works too (but I have to be under budget first though so I’ll work extra hard to be under budget again in October).
Now even though I’ve been over budget two months in a row here, the really important thing is that I’m still saving more than I’m spending. My budget is set to have me spending a total of 75% (rounded down to the nearest $100) of my take home pay so I’m saving 25% right there plus what goes into my 401k (which Mint isn’t accounting for at this time but I have contacted them with a request to add my provider) plus any income that’s not from my regular job. Mint has also finally introduced a Net Worth chart so I can see how that is evolving over the course of time and this year it’s doing well (as far as I can tell the stock market has been recovering all year).
Disclosure: Some links in this post are affiliate links.
Related posts:
- August Budget Wrap Up
- October Budget Wrap Up
- January Budget Wrap Up
- A Budget That Works
- December Budget Wrap Up
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I have a “Freedom Account”. The categories of it include auto insurance, car care, pet care, professional license, and professional organizations. I take the total that I spend in one year and divide it by 24. Every payday I put that amount into a separate checking account. When the annual bills come up I have the cash ready. For the other categories, I have money when I need to buy pounds of cat food or get my oil changed/tires rotated every 3 months. It’s been a life saver and it’s so automatic to me now.
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