Budgeting - Variable Expenses

After figuring out our fixed expenses Will and I had a good idea of how much money we had to spend on variable expenses each month. We came up with a list of variable expenses for our budget. Below you'll find the list of these variable expenses. We tried to take into account all variable expenses before assigning a dollar amount to each category in the monthly budget.  Some categories are more flexible than others and it is with these categories that we managed to "balance" our budget. 

Because some of these expenses only come up every few months, or maybe even only once or twice a year, it was a bit more challenging figuring out how much to budget for each category. We tried to start with expenses that occur every month and work our way down from there. We have since tweaked the budget a couple times to better fit our spending patterns. Here are the categories we came up with along with (not so) brief explanations of what each category includes or why we chose that specific category):

Metro - This is for Will getting to and from work. It includes both the metro and parking fees. It does not include me using the metro - that would fall under "entertainment."

Gas - This number was based on how many tanks of gas we generally go through in a month when we're at home. This does not include any gas for travel purposes.

Food and Household Supplies - This includes all groceries and any household items that are used and        

need to be replaced on a regular basis (cleaners, napkins, etc.). (For us) This does not include eating out in groups (either as a family or going out with a friend), but does include eating out if one of us just grabs lunch out alone.

Entertainment - This includes eating out in groups plus any other activities we do for fun (going to a movie or concert, having a party, etc.). It also includes baby sitting costs if we need to hire a babysitter to go out.

House - Betsy - This includes any items I may purchase for the house. Generally bigger items like furniture, window coverings or larger (indoor) house projects (painting, remodeling, etc). This part of the budget was actually in place before we even considered the need for a budget because I tend to go a little crazy with the spending otherwise. Now, I know how much money I have and don't feel the need to run larger purchases past Will first (although I still usually ask him, but he generally has no opinion if I'm staying within budget). It has forced me to really think about our needs vs. our wants. For example: We need a crib for the new baby. I want to finish the laundry room (likely not gonna happen for many many moons). This particular line item has also eliminated a lot of squabbles about what quality furniture to purchase. I tend to want to buy higher quality, but more expensive items that will last us a lifetime. Whereas, Will tends to want to buy something that will get the job done for now but likely need to be replaced in a few years.

Clothes - To come up with this number we estimated how much we would need to spend in a year on clothes per person. We then came up with a monthly allowance based on that estimate. We've already had to up the budget for this line item slightly.

Donations - This is the amount of money we donate to organizations other than the church. We came up with a yearly amount we wanted to hit and divided by twelve to come up with this number. Starting next year we will try to keep up with these donations each month instead of making the majority of our donations right at the end of the year when we realize we haven't donated as much as we wanted.

Travel - This includes anything related to travel - food, gas, plane tickets, etc. It does not include our expenses while on vacation. So, we wouldn't include eating out or other activities while we were on vacation under this line item. Such activities would fall under "entertainment."

Car Maintenance - I think this is self explanatory. Anything related to keeping our cars in good working condition falls into this category.

House Maintenance - Similar to car maintenance, this includes anything required to keep our house in good condition.

Miscellaneous - This category is key. There are so many little expenses that come and go. We didn't want to have to have a line item for every. single. little. thing. So, we created this miscellaneous category. This includes prescriptions, hair cuts, baby sitting costs for non-entertainment purposes (when I teach CCD), etc. Really anything that doesn't fit nicely into another category gets thrown here. We tried to make this for truly random or small expenses. It's the line item with the least amount of money in it

Gifts - We actually came up with a yearly budget for this and keep track as the year goes by. This includes any gifts we purchase throughout the year - birthday, wedding, baptism, anniversary, etc. It also includes any postage necessary to get gifts to their desired location and any gift wrap we purchase for said gifts. I was amazed how much money gets spent on gifts each year!

Surplus - We put any money that isn't specifically assigned to a particular category into this line item. It's pretty small, but allows us to make small adjustments as needed fairly easily.

If you've made it this far, bravo for you! Having a logical, type A personality I tend to enjoy this kind of stuff. I loved coming up with the budget and enjoy finding ways to save money and make the money we do have go as far as possible.

I pinned it and did it. Now I'll review it.

Ever since we bought our freezer last year I've been working on finding good freezer meal recipes to stock the freezer with. I've also come to love my crockpot, so when I came across this pin I just had to try it out. The recipes seemed to fit the parameters of what my family will eat (after eliminating any onions or peppers in the recipes) and seemed to give a reasonable amount of variety.

I had the brilliant idea to try this during our first month on a budget. I compiled my grocery list substituting a few ingredients for those listed (adding in veggies when I needed to replace an "off limits" veggie, etc). And I doubled the recipes so we ended up with 24 meals (I think that's right, but I could be off by a few).

I logged them all into an excel spreadsheet so I could keep track of what was in the freezer and jot down our thoughts on each meal. Here is what I wrote down for each meal (in the order that we tried them) along with any other thoughts that come up right now :)


*Healthy Mama BBQ Chicken - The perfect amount for the 3 of us! Serve with rolls and you're done.    

This was one of my favorite recipes from the line up. I really liked that we didn't have leftovers and that it was so healthy and flavorful. Don't let the "BBQ" fool you. It isn't like traditional BBQ. Honestly, I'm not sure why it's called "BBQ Chicken" since it's more like flavorful, fall apart chicken with veggies.

*Chicken Taco Soup - Makes a LOT. Maybe cut recipe in half? We've already gotten nearly 2 full dinners out of it so I ended up freezing the other half for later. Also, if chicken breasts are large (.7lbs or larger) you only need 2.

This is a great meal for a large group of people. I wonder if you could split the recipe in half before freezing but I'm not sure if/how that would affect the cooking time?

Bean Stew - A good meal for Friday. Will and Joseph liked it (with black beans), and I thought it was fine for a Friday meal but not something I would be asking for otherwise.

Chicken and Sweet Potato Stew - I didn't have any, but everyone at the potluck seemed to like it. Makes A LOT.

This is the only meal that I never actually tasted because I gave my second batch of it as an extra meal for a new mom. I got lots of compliments on it at the potluck I took it to, though.

*Sausage and Bean Supper - Very good, but pretty similar to the New England Baked Bean Stew I make. Be sure to use *non-spicy* sausage next time :)

The non-spicy sausage is so Joseph can eat it with us (without tears, because he still gobbles up the sausage even if it's spicy and causing him pain).

Pork and Veggies - Good. Will and Joseph really liked it, but I was just so-so on the meal. We have a decent amount of leftovers, but I don't think quite enough for 2 full meals.

Meat Stew - Good, but not super flavorful. A good simple meal.

Chicken Tortilla Soup - This was very similar to the Chicken Taco Soup, but much more soupy. Very good.

*Creamy Farmhouse Chicken and Garden Soup - I loved this. A good, hearty soup for a cold day.


Overall I was very happy with my experience preparing a bunch of freezer meals at one time. I will likely continue to prepare meals using this method as it made meal planning much easier.

Also, while the woman who wrote the post with the recipes I used this time did all the prep work in one day it took me nearly a week because I couldn't find one full day to do prep without any distractions (aka - Joseph). But it was still worth it to me.

I plan on making all of the *starred recipes again in preparation for baby #2 as they were my favorites. I also plan on trying a few recipes from here this time around. Eventually I hope to have a list of recipes tailored to my family's tastes. It's a slow process trying out new recipes, but I think it will definitely be worth the effort.

Budgeting - Fixed Expenses

In my first post on budgeting I talked about why we (finally) decided we needed to come up with a budget. In this post I would like to share the first step we took in coming up with our budget: finding our fixed expenses.
Once Will and I realized we needed a budget we sat down and listed out all of our fixed expenses. We included all expenses that we could expect on a regular schedule whether it was monthly, bi-annually, annually, etc. Here is the list we came up with:

Mortgage
Faith Direct (a monthly donation to our parish)
Cardinal's Appeal (a monthly donation to our diocese)
Student Loans
Disability Insurance
Bar Dues
Will Cell Phone
Betsy Cell Phone (we're on different plans at the moment)
Cable
Internet
CFCA (we sponsor a young man in India through this agency)
Trash
*Water
*Electric
Car Insurance
AAA
Savings

*These items are variable, but tend to be pretty similar or average out over time, so we simply listed the average cost per month for these two line items.

With this list in hand we were able to figure out our monthly expenditure for our fixed expenses.

We pay our car insurance bi-annually (it's cheaper that way if you can plan ahead!). So this expense doesn't come out of our bank account every month, but we were able to come up with how much money we need to set aside each month in order to have the money in our account when the bill comes every 6 months.

Our fixed expenses (theoretically) don't change on a month-to-month basis, so we were able to figure out how much money we had left to allot to our variable expenses.

For most people their fixed expenses represent the largest portion of their budget, so if you're spending beyond your means (aka - spending more money each month than you're taking in) cutting back on some of your fixed expenses is the best place to start.

Will and I have already discussed which items on this list we will cut when our budget becomes tighter (assuming we have more children). For us those include: cable and cutting down on our monthly contributions to savings or eliminating these contributions altogether (if that becomes necessary). We've also discussed possibly cutting back on our cell phones and getting a pay-as-you-go plan instead because we hardly ever use our cell phones anyway (we both already have the most basic plans available). But, we haven't done enough research on different phone plans to know if we would really save much money.

If you're not sure where to start with creating a budget for your family start by making a list of ALL of your fixed expenses. There are lots of software programs you can buy to help you track your spending, but we chose to just set up our own spreadsheet in Excel. Using Excel is fairly simple and, best of all, it's free!

Up next: Budgeting - Variable Expenses

Ten Minute Tuesday - The Need for a Budget Edition

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much I haven’t been blogging. I’ve realized that it isn’t as high of a priority for me as it was before. That, and I’ve started reading about a zillion other blogs and by the time I’ve read them I’ve basically used up my computer time. I am only able to write this right now because a) I know that it’s only 10 minutes and b) Will and Joseph are having some quality bonding time right now.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that budgeting post (or posts) I said I was going to do. And I still plan on doing them. So, maybe this would be a good place to give a little background as to why we started budgeting in the first place.

Shortly before Labor Day I finally decided we needed a couch for the front room (the play room). I had been pondering it for several months and wavered back and forth whether it was something that needed to be purchased now or if it was something that could wait a year (or two or three). But the more I thought about it the more I realized how nice it would be to have somewhere to sit (not the floor) while nursing baby #2 and watching Joseph play. So, I started looking for a couch.

I told Will about this and informed him that it would likely use up the rest of my “for the house” budget for the year and likely dip a little into next year’s budget. He had forgotten we had even set a limit for me. But when it comes to spending money I need clear limits. When he realized how much this was going to cost he started looking at our bank account. I had mentioned before that I thought we were spending more than we were taking in, but he brushed it off saying that he gets paid every 2 weeks so occasionally we would have a 3-paycheck month that should cover the monthly decrease.

It wasn’t until the couch purchase was almost a done deal that he took a closer look at our bank account, and we were, indeed, spending more than we were taking in….to the tune of approximately $100/month (eeks!!!). So, we sat down that same weekend and made a budget. As with most families (I think) food and household supplies are our biggest monthly expenditure (behind mortgage/rent).

My time is running out, but let’s just say our first month with putting a limit on our food/household supplies budget was a bit of a challenge, but a really good learning experience. I think it’s going to take a little time to get used to, but I’m up for the challenge.


Now go see Rachel at Testosterhome for more!