Welcome To Our September Personal Budget Report!
Welcome to another monthly budget report. Can you believe it’s officially fall? I’m super hyped up about October. Some of you might even know that this is actually my Blogtober day 5 post!
No clue what I’m talking about when I say Blogtober? Head on back to Blogtober Day 1 or this pre-Blogtober post I wrote, and get caught up.
I’m not even going to try to hide it. This month didn’t go well. I kind of blew my budget buying Halloween decorations this month. It’s totally psychological. I’m bummed about the state of the world right now, stir crazy from more than half a year in isolation, beyond stressed about my job, and giddy that Halloween approaches.
I know better, but I definitely let my mood impact my spending habits this year. My house is Addams-ing nicely, though.
To make matters worse, that’s not the only thing that blew the budget in September! We’ve had big issues with our rental income, and there seems to be a leak in our budget that needs patched.
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.
- How to prepare for short term emergencies
- How to cope when you don’t have an emergency fund
- 15 reusable items that save money all year long
- How to build a Get Home Bag for less than $60.
- 10 more reusable items that save money all year long
- How to plan a successful no spend month
- 6 Reasons you need to build a Get Home Bag now
- How to Get Out of Debt: A Step By Step Guide
Want more budget report goodness? Check out these links to see our previous months!
- August 2019 Budget Report
- September 2019 Budget Report
- October 2019 Budget Report
- November 2019 Budget Report
- December 2019 Budget Report
- January 2020 Budget Report
- February 2020 Budget Report
- March 2020 Budget Report
- April 2020 Budget Report
- May 2020 Budget Report
- June 2020 Budget Report
- July 2020 Budget Report
- August 2020 Budget Report
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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.
September Income Budget Report- $6,247.60
- Teacher Salary – $7,023.18 This includes both teacher salaries after the automatic withdrawal of taxes and health insurance. I was a little short on training hours last year, so I took a small financial hit this month.
- Rental Income Property – -$810.18 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. Our renter has been struggling to keep up with payments recently, and it hit us really hard this month. Yes, I know we should have a separate account for rental income with a buffer. But we don’t. That’s just life right now. Time to strategize based on our actual situation instead of what we should have done in the past.
- Extra Income Deposited – $0 Nothing this month. I’m still working crazy long hours, so not much time for survey sites.
- Extra Income Paid in Cash – $0
- Rebates – $0
- Blog Income – $34.60 Guys, how exciting is this? I officially get to report blog income! This is payment I received for an Ultimate Bundles affiliate sale back in July. Even more exciting, I get to put an even bigger number here next month!
September Spending Budget Report - $6,613.67
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 - $4,365.38
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 – $625.54 This covers the electricity, water, sewer, and pest control services. We also had our property sprayed for mosquitos, though it doesn’t seem to be helping much.
- 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.
- 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 – $49.27
- 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 – $512.56 A little closer to our normal. Prices are still pretty high, and shortages are pretty apparent right now. When we find something we use, we buy a fair amount of it.
Debt Expenses - $715.50
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!) Recently, the amount of my loan has gone into savings, waiting to make a lump sum payment when student loan payments go back to normal. This month, I am not banking that payment because we’re way over budget.
- Debt Repayment – $280.00 Just the minimum this time. Noticing a theme? We had a bad month!
- Fees and Charges – $35.50 I know y’all have heard be brag about not paying an overdraft fee in a decade. This is still technically true. Living on last month’s income eliminates overdrafts as long as I’m careful and track my expenses. We never quite got Mr. P&P to that point, and it hurt us this month. Definitely one of the cons of our choice not to combine our finances. It really shouldn’t even have happened. That’s why I think we might have a budgetary leak that needs patched somewhere (although, the extra $800 in mortgage payments really didn’t help).
- Medical Debt – $0
Other Recurring Monthly Expenses - $253.91
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 – $85.17 This is both cell phone plans.
- Digital Media, Streaming, and Internet – $56.96 This covers our internet and Hulu account.
- 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 - $1,260.88
These expenses change every month. They are somewhat unpredictable and variable.
- Health Care – $32.98 Medications and breathe Right strips. These totally count as a medical expense because without them, I would probably kick Mr. P&P to death in his sleep…
- Home Improvement – $0
- Home Expenses – $36.14 Some basic household supplies. We buy in bulk.
- Dining Out – $131.17 We had family over one night, and we ordered out a couple times.
- Blog Expenses – $239.47 This covers my GBTK purchase, Tailwind subscription (trying it out this year), some advertising fees, and a couple other little things.
- Baby Expenses – $58.83 More diapers and wipes, plus a little kid mask. Baby girl hasn’t gone anywhere except daycare since March. It’s probably time to start training her to tolerate a mask.
- Classroom Spending – $0
- Digital Streaming/Media $0
- Gifts – $13 I grabbed Baby girl a Moana necklace for a Christmas gift on a trip to Spirit.
- Hobbies and Entertainment – $158.40 Mr. P&P’s quarterly comic box renewal. I also grabbed some bits and bobs and craft supplies.
- Other Spending – $130.83 I grabbed more work pants now that I’m not rewearing clothing to work between washes anymore. We also replaced our Harmony remote, and I may have purchased myself a few year round spooky accessories at Spirit.
- Holidays – 460.06 I’m actually a little embarrassed by this. I didn’t realize that my Halloween shopping had gotten quite so out of hand. House is looking awesome, though. This includes tons of craft supplies and decorations for DIY’s and a whole bunch of wooden stakes for a Halloween graveyard fence project. We had a crazy hard time finding everything we needed. Turns out there’s a lumber shortage, too.
- Savings – $0 My student loan payment was used this month to cover expenses rather than put into savings. I’ll make up for it in the coming months.
Donations - $18.00
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.
If you’d like more details or information, go check out my post. This month, I donated the full amount of my extra income to a cause, plus a little extra.
- Campaign Zero – $18 Campaign Zero works to encourage policymakers to focus on evidence based solutions to reducing police violence.
Budget Report Goals Progress
Whew. What a month. We didn’t do so great. I can’t even blame it all on the rental property because we just didn’t do a great job this month.
Sometimes it’s like that, though, right? The great thing about tracking our budget expenses is that we received a nice, rude awakening, and now we’re super focused on cleaning up our mess and getting back on track.
This definitely isn’t a position I like to be in given the current circumstances, so I’m feeling pretty motivated to have a way better October.
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 madness of 2020. But nothing is permanent anymore. I’ll be honest, I’m even a little bit worried about what education will even look like come 2021.
Here in Texas, our infection numbers continue to grow, and both our schools now have confirmed positive cases. 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.
- How to prepare for short term emergencies
- How to cope when you don’t have an emergency fund
- 15 reusable items that save money all year long
- How to Build a Get Home Bag for Less Than $60.
- 10 more reusable items that save money all year long
- How to plan a successful no spend month
- 6 Reasons You Need To Build A Get Home Bag Now
- How to Get Out of Debt: A Step By Step Guide
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.
$7,909.99 / $39,558.61
We are shooting for a goal of payoff in 2 years! Just 9 months to go.
A little up this month due to all the poor budgeting choices, but we’ll get it back under control!
$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.
$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.
$11,249.33 / $14,111.92
We’re not putting extra here yet.
$59,486.14 / $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.
$403,877.66 / $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!
While you’re at it, don’t forget to share this post on your favorite social media, follow us, and subscribe to our newsletter, so you can stay up to date on all the Blogtober fabulosity happening this month. I won’t email you every day this month, I promise!
Tomorrow, we’ll have some lighter reading, so don’t forget to come on back and read day 6!
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Congratulations on being able to list blogging income! That’s so exciting. I know that’s something that I should be able to list soon (just got ads up and running) and I am SO excited to celebrate the first month that I can claim the same thing!
I love that you’re so open and transparent. It really helps to get me thinking about my own spending habits.
I bet your time will come soon! I’m glad that this got you thinking about your own habits. I REALLY didn’t want to be honest with anyone, myself included, about my spending this month, but that’s how we grow!