August Budget Report – A Year of Budget Reports!

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Welcome To Our August Personal Budget Report!

It’s that time again. Here’s our August budget report.

Can you guys believe that next month begins a whole new year of budget reports? That’s right, Problems and Projects just celebrated it’s one year Blogiversary! I can’t believe it’s been a whole year.

I also can’t believe how far we’ve come, and just how crazy everything has been in the past year. We’ve dealt with illness, hospitalizations, selling our Money Pit house, buying a new home, a global pandemic, an overnight restructuring of our professions, a growing toddler, and so much more.

Make sure you check out our debt payoff progress charts at the end of this post.

We’re kicking off our second year of debt payoff with a bang, too. We paid off another credit card this month! I’m still considering participating in Blogtober this year, though I’m less and less sure about how I’ll actually pull it off! 

Anyway, let’s look at last month’s earning, spending, and saving!

The world continues to be a scary place, and I urge everyone to start getting finances in order, and get prepared for emergencies. Preparedness, financial freedom, and money management go hand in hand. You simply can’t have one without the others! If you’re looking for some reading material to get you started, I’ve got a few that might be helpful.

Want more budget report goodness? Check out our full year of budget reports using these links!

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Why Create A Monthly Budget Report?

The first real budget I set was back in 2014 when I made A LOT less money than I do today. I had been idling along for years in my retail service job, scraping by from paycheck to paycheck, and making very little headway. Way back then, it wasn’t even debt reduction or budgeting that got me interested in getting my finances under control. An interest in prepping lead me there. 

In learning about preparedness, I began to realize that if there were ever an emergency, I was going to be out of luck. There was no savings to speak of, cash or otherwise. Stocking up was out of the question. The debt I had accrued was taking up all my expendable income and then some. I thought I was okay with money, but it turned out, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. At best, I was JUST okay. So, I started to research. 

I probably learned about every system under the sun. Cash envelope systems, spreadsheets, percentages and ratios… There was so much to absorb. I made a lot of mistakes. To be honest, I still do. But I did find a system that worked for me, and it made a difference almost instantly. In finally creating a physical budget, I could see that my money was being wasted all over the place. It was no wonder I couldn’t catch up. 

If I could share only one takeaway, it’s this. You do, in fact, need to set a budget and put it on paper! Yes, technology counts as paper here!

Why Am I Sharing My Spending And Earnings?

Simply put, it helped me when others showed me what they were doing. I can only hope that sharing my own monthly budget report can help others out there who aren’t sure where to start. 

I also think it’s really important that we talk about money. Like, as a society. The secrecy and shame surrounding spending makes it so much harder to figure out a system that works for you. There should be less fear of judgement and failure around money. If I can contribute to expanding the conversation, I want to! 

Now that I have a child, I am realizing she learns so much by watching me. The best way for me to set her up for success is by showing her what’s out there and how it could be handled. It might not have taken me until I was almost 30 to realize I didn’t actually know what I was doing if there had been more conversations about healthy spending going on around me.

Budget Report Details Before We Start

Everyone budgets a little differently. There’s not really a right or wrong way. Just what works. Mr. P&P and I don’t track our budgets exactly the same way. But we’re working on getting there.

For a little consistency on our budget report, I’ll calculate monthly spending based on purchases made during the calendar month. 

As for income, I work on a zero based budget using last month’s income. Basically, this means that all the money I earn this month is budgeted and spent next month. It’s an absolute life saver, especially if money is tight or inconsistent. Having the ability to borrow from my future self has saved my life a few times! Want to learn more? Check out this post where I break down how and why I budget this way!

Note: I’ve started making donations as I earn! Waiting a whole month doesn’t feel right. I’m adding the half of earnings that I keep into the next month’s budget like normal.

Mr. P&P is still budgeting the current month’s income, so we do a little of both. Since most of our income is salary, this really only effects extra earnings and rental income.

 

August Income Budget Report- $6,836.90

  • Teacher Salary – $6,959.64 This includes both teacher salaries after the automatic withdrawal of taxes and health insurance. 
  • Rental Income Property – -$124.01 Our first home was a townhouse we paid under $100,000 for in good condition, which is unheard of today. When we bought our last house, The Pit, we decided it was better to keep the town home as rental income rather than sell it to put money toward the new house. We stand by this choice today! This is the money we receive after paying any management and repair fees. Our renter has been struggling recently to stay current, so we’re taking a little bit of a hit this month. Personally, I’d rather have someone in the house paying something than risk letting it sit vacant. Plus, we just don’t feel good about evicting someone who’s trying their best during a difficult time. 
  • Extra Income Deposited – $1.27 I haven’t even set up my cash out from InstaGC this month, I’m so overwhelmed. This came unexpectedly from Amazon. They actually sent me the money I had earned last year as an affiliate before kicking me out. (I haven’t hit my sales minimum this time around either, so if you’re looking to help me out…)
    • I’m loving InstaGC (click to sign up and try it out!) right now. While I haven’t had nearly as much time to dedicate to it lately, I still think it’s one of the easiest survey sites you can use to earn some extra cash. 
  • Extra Income Paid in Cash – $0
  • Rebates – $0
Fun fact. I might actually receive some real blog income next month, which is super exciting! I didn’t actually think I’d earn anything in my first year, but as I begin my second, I’m closing in on my first $100! Thanks for all your support!

August Spending Budget Report - $9,829.13

We’re still slowly figuring out our new normal with household expenses. Since we have yet to experience “normal”, it’s still hard to estimate our regular expenses in advance. I’m starting to think we may never experience it.

Monthly Living Expenses - $4,326.15

This budget report category includes typical monthly expenses that come out of our budget pretty much every month. These are our “basic living” expenses that we need to pay in order to get through the month.

  • Mortgage – $2,152.66 This is our total mortgage payment on our new house, including insurance, escrow. etc. It’s a lot higher than we paid at The Pit. However, we wanted to stay in our area, and we now have considerably fewer rodents living with us.  
  • Utilities – $538.00 This covers the electricity, water, sewer, and pest control services. Even though we moved, we are contracted with our pest control service through the  summer. This month, our electric bill skyrocketed. It’s over 100 degrees outside, so that’s some of the problem. We’re working on having our AC unit serviced and insulation redone.
  • Daycare – $700 Paid during the school year. We are fortunate to know an incredible lady who provides services for teacher’s kids at a very affordable rate. Yes, our rate did increase a little bit this year.
  • Car Payment – $234.35 On top of the home issues last summer, Mr. P&P’s 14 year old car died right in the midst of everything. The car seat doesn’t fit in mine, and we were basically living in a hotel, so we were stranded. We purchased a used car through Hertz Rentals because we knew it would be maintained, and their process is very straightforward. But we didn’t have the cash saved up after foundation repair, so we had to finance. I am still driving my 13 year old, paid off sub-compact.  
  • Gas, Toll, and Other Transportation Expenses – $39.33 Just one gas fill up this month.
  • Car Insurance – $91.00 We decided to start setting aside money each month to cover estimated insurance premiums. It renewed this month, so now, we’re rolling money into a sinking fund again for December renewal.
  • Groceries – $570.81 A little higher than usual. I’m noticing higher prices and shortages again as COVID cases spike in my state, so I’m less able to price comparison shop and have to get what I can find. 

Debt Expenses - $4,204.11

This is money we spend in order to pay down previously existing debts and any expenses resulting from debt. Just look at how much money we’re giving away!

  • Student Loans – $400.00 Mr. P&P is still making his payments. (Federal student loans older than 10 years DO NOT qualify for COVID related assistance!) The cost of my loans will go into savings for now. Since my loans are not accruing interest, I will set aside my monthly payment for 6 months. Things are so uncertain right now, and I want a buffer in savings if there’s an emergency. If all is well, I’ll make a 6-month sized payment in September. 
  • Debt Repayment – $3,804.11 That second to last credit card was just too tempting to let sit another month. Our 0% balance transfer offer also expired this month, so if we finished it off, we avoided transfer fees or interest. One card to go! Full disclosure: We did use our stimulus check to pay most of this off. Since it seems like we’ll be employed for another year, we felt ok pulling this from savings. 
  • Fees and Charges – $0 
  • Medical Debt – $0  No payments on Mr. P&P’s hospital bills from October

Other Recurring Monthly Expenses - $256.68

These budget report expenses happen every month, but they are not vital spending categories! It’s the stuff we could get rid of and survive if we needed to.

  • Phones – $87.94 This is both cell phone plans. 
  • Digital Media, Streaming, and Internet – $56.96 I’m honestly not sure why our internet price went down this month. Maybe they feel bad about the terrible service we’ve had since we moved in February…
  • Rock Climbing Gym – $75.78  We love rock climbing together! But when we learned that Baby Girl was coming, we stopped attending and haven’t picked back up. The gym is closed, but we’re still being charged. We don’t want the place to go out of business, so we will pay.
  • Monthly Renewals – $36.00 We each have some subscription boxes for various hobby interests throughout the year. It’s lower because one of the businesses was required to shut down for a bit due to the pandemic.

Variable Spending - $992.19

These expenses change every month. They are somewhat unpredictable and variable. 

  • Health Care – $0 Nothing this month.
  • Home Improvement – $0 No projects this month.
  • Home Expenses – $119.64 A grow light because we don’t get direct sunlight through any of our ten thousand windows and some seeds for fall and next spring. Most of my collection is a solid 5 years old, and my germination test … didn’t go great. Baker Creek seeds are my personal favorite, but seeds are also hard to come by right now, so I got a couple packets on Amazon as well. 
  • Dining Out – $149.04  I’m currently working about 14 hours every single day to survive virtual learning, so we ordered in a few times due to general exhaustion. The bulk of this expense was some very disappointing BBQ.
  • Blog Expenses – $0 
  • Baby Expenses – $21.93 I did not miss buying diapers all the time during lockdown! We used cloth diapers with our two year old for everything in the last 6 months except nap and bedtime (she’s such a heavy wetter!). Now that she’s back at daycare, I feel like I’m constantly buying disposables again. Blergh.
  • Classroom Spending – $7 I noticed a ridiculous deal on those tiny Tupperware cubes at the grocery store, and grabbed a class set to contain dice even though all my students are currently virtual. 
  • Digital Streaming/Media $0 
  • Gifts – $0 
  • Hobbies and Entertainment – $0 It’s easy not to spend any money on entertainment when you never stop working. 
  • Other Spending – $294.58 A random mix of things this month. We both needed extra clothing now that we’re showering twice daily and stripping down in the doorway. I’m finalizing the contents of my get home bag. We needed some toiletries, and we grabbed a new tv stand. My sister in law upgraded her tv and gave us her old one. I love it when my sister in law buys new furniture/appliances! We appreciate it greatly because our vision is getting so bad that we could barely see our old, much smaller one! Aging is fun. 
  • Holidays – 0 Don’t worry. I make up for this in September…
  • Savings – $400.00 My student loan payment. I’ve chosen to add those payments to savings while the CARES ACT has suspended my interest. At the end of December, when my interest rate kicks in again, I’ll make a lump sump payment, provided our situation stays the same.

Donations - $50.00

Those of you who read this post might remember that I’ve decided to start donating half of my online income to organizations that support black causes in light of recent events in my country. I’ll be doing this for 9 months. I don’t make much, but I felt a strong pull to do something to help fight racism and the mistreatment of humans in my country.

This month, I’m doing things a little differently. At the end of August, lightning struck and caught fire to some apartment buildings in my school’s zone. This complex is home to the bulk of our low income students, a majority of our black or brown families.

Fortunately, and quite miraculously considering how fast everything went up, nobody was hurt. However, several of my school’s families, including a couple of my own students, lost everything or are displaced from their homes indefinitely. 

Rather than choosing a charitable organization, this month, I added money to a staff cash pool started to help these families acquire some basic needs in light of this tragedy. 

Do you have a favorite organization that needs support? Comment below and let me know who they are. Maybe they’ll show up in my next budget report. 

Budget Report Goals Progress

 

We’re finally down to our last, and largest credit card! The end of our $40,000 credit card payoff journey gets closer every month. Then, we will regroup and decide our next big goal.

Should we pad our savings a bit, start launching money at our student loans, pay down the mortgage loans, or something else altogether? We don’t know just yet, but we’re excited to figure it out.

We’re also getting a head start on Halloween shopping because I’m decorating for Halloween whether it happens or not. I’m really hoping to go all out since last Halloween was interrupted by antibiotic resistant MRSA trying to kill my family… But I don’t want to blow the bank, either! I think a bunch of DIY budget posts might show up during Blogtober.

Now that we’re returning to school again, our expenses will be going back up. Daycare, toll tag, and fuel costs return. That’s not to mention some unusual expenses that come with returning to school during a pandemic. We’re showering before and after school, doing laundry every single day, buying our own PPE, and trying to improve our immune systems. All of these little things add up to big extras in our budget.

Here’s hoping no major medical expenses throw a wrench in our progress.

I’m also continuing to grow our preparedness storage, just in case.

I know that not everyone out there is as fortunate as us. If you’ve lost your income, or it’s been cut drastically, I recently wrote this post about how to cope right now if you didn’t have an emergency fund to fall back on. I outline a bunch of ideas to help cut costs and increase income while times are tough.

A Quick Word On Preparedness

In the P&P household, we’re all still healthy and relatively untouched by the pandemic and protests. But friends, things are changing… FAST. With states opening up, people choosing not to social distance, and people losing their minds out in the world, who can say what the future will bring? 

Here in Texas, our infection numbers are still growing. The first wave wasn’t that long ago, and hopefully, you still remember the stress of food and supply shortages that snuck up on so many people. If you can prevent it the next time, I urge you to do so. Don’t wait until things get worse.

NOW is the time to take steps and get prepared if you haven’t already. Get money in the bank, food in the pantry, and supplies in storage.  

Here’s that list of helpful posts again, just in case you’d like more information.

What Does The Future Hold?

Facing your financial burdens head on does not feel good, but it is important if you want to grow. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t know it exists. No matter where you are, figure out what you’re starting with so you can decide where you’re going.

If you need help getting started, well, that’s what I’m here for. Check out this recent post that will give you a step by step guide to help you make a plan and get out of debt.

We longingly dream of the day we can say we are entirely debt free! I don’t know if that day will come, but why not dream big? Today, our goal is to make progress. But someday, we want to have as much control as possible over how we use our money. So, I’m giving you a breakdown below of our major debt goals and monthly progress. Who doesn’t love a nice graph?

All totals except the credit cards go back to the original loan amounts, and the credit card total comes from our calculations in September 2019.

The percentage bar shows the percentage paid off. 

The numbers beneath show the total remaining / original loan.

Credit Card Payoff Goal
Debt Paid 81%

$7,503.18 / $39,558.61

We are shooting for a goal of payoff in 2 years! Just 1 year to go.

What? We’re down to our last credit card! In one year, we’ve managed to pay down 81% of our massive almost $40,000 credit card debt! Yes, we had some help along the way with a cash out refinance, stimulus money, and a good tax return, but a little more than half of that payoff total was all us, even with a hospitalization, a move, and a pandemic. We’re feeling pretty darn proud!

Medical Debt Payoff Goal
Debt Paid 16.4%

$11,885.63 / $14,169.05

This includes only the debt I took on with the birth of Baby Girl. The cost of her conception through treatments and prenatal care were paid in cash, as was the hospital down payment. It’s just the debt accrued after delivery complications and emergency services that I couldn’t deal with due to a mostly unpaid maternity leave. A lot of this is currently in collections because I just don’t have enough money to settle yet, but I’m chipping away.

Medical Debt Payoff Goal #2
Debt Paid 9.5%

$5,000.27 / $5,526.63

This is the debt we took on as a result of Mr. P&P getting an infection that went septic and needing hospitalization in October.

Car Payment Payoff Goal
Debt Paid 19.1%

$11,418.69 / $14,111.92

We’re not putting extra here yet.

Student Loan Payoff Goal
Debt Paid 25.8%

$59,766.70 / $80,567.17

Someday, we might qualify for debt forgiveness due to becoming public school teachers. We’re not really putting a ton of eggs in that basket though. If I can get them paid off earlier, I will. A lot of the progress I made here happened in the years where my income was fairly low, so I’m pretty proud of that. 

In January, I officially paid off one of those loans! Slow progress is still progress. 

Mortgages Payoff Goal
Debt Paid -38.3%

$404,419.16 / $292,407.00

I left our previous mortgage total because I thought it would be interesting. Mostly, it’s painful. This move increased our debt total in this category significantly. There’s no guilt here, though. 

We had to make the best choice for our family’s health and finances. The best choice for us was to get out of The Pit, and start again somewhere else. Between the purchase of the new home and the refinance on the rental property, we took on a lot more mortgage debt. It’s weird, though. For the first time in a while, we feel like we can breathe. We see a light at the end of the tunnel and an opportunity to actually make some progress. 

We are definitely gambling a little bit. Not much can go wrong, and the budget will be tight for at least a year. Of course, with Coronavirus, we have some anxiety about this change. I couldn’t imagine, though, self isolating and working from home in a house infested with rats! We still think the move was a good choice.

The mortgages are last on our list of payoff priorities. They’re pretty huge amounts for us, but we really would like to pay them off early and save some interest!

Now, It's Your Turn

If you haven’t sat down yet and faced your debt head-on, I really encourage you to do it! Figure out what you owe. Write it down. Stare those numbers in the eye and acknowledge them! Here’s a step by step guide to help you get started. 

You can’t fix a problem you don’t know about!

What was your spending month like? How have recent events altered your budget or plans? What are you doing to stay on top of everything?

How are your personal finance goals coming along? We would love to know!

Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter below and stay updated on new posts and info that will come straight to your inbox.

This Post Has 9 Comments

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  3. Alexis Farmer

    Congratulations on your one year blogsversary! I think these kinds of posts are super helpful. Best of luck to reaching your financial goals!

    1. P&P

      Thank you! I know I find them helpful. As much as I love an inspirational storey it’s nice to see what it really looks like sometimes, took.

  4. Richie

    Hi P&P. This is really interesting (how geeky does that sound?!). We started budgeting (using spreadsheets) years ago when we bought our first house and kept finding that we had no money left at the end of the month – largely because we were both trainees on pitiful salaries. Seeing where the money went was an eye-opener! Those occasional takeaways and meals out soon add up. We still complete the spreadsheet now just to keep track of our spending even though we no longer run out of funds at the end of each month. To make it even more geeky I do a pie chart summary of annual expenditure to see where it all goes. In the early days it was nearly all on the mortgage, these days its mostly into savings and pensions. Keep up the good work.

    1. P&P

      I don’t think it’s geeky at all! Well, any geekier than I am, anyway. We create our own spreadsheets to track our money. There’s even a nice little line graph in our spreadsheets that show debt repayment progress over the last several years. It’s helping us to speed up our debt payoff right now! I’m looking forward to increasing our savings amount once we cut down on the debt!

  5. claire

    I think it is really valuable to share this, it shows that debt reduction and budgeting can be done.

    I agree we should be more open about talking money, it should not be taboo x

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