Our Budget

One of my bestest friends asked me to post my budget so here you go!! I'll try to give more details where necessary too.

Here's the snapshot from Mint.com:



1. Mortgage & Rent: Our rent for our AZ apartment is $1218.90 per month, our mortgage & Home Equity Loan for our house in Michigan is $1,006.12 but we collect $1,100 in rent from our tenants.

2. Groceries: This is all "store" stuff- toilet paper, deoderant, etc. not ONLY groceries. We spend $150 per week for both of us so normally $600 per month. According to the budgeting forums on Dave Ramsey's website, you should expect to spend $100/per person per month. That means Michael and I should only spend $200/month but I have no idea how we'd ever do that. But if you want to shoot for that, good luck! (Lexi, for you, you'd want to budget $400 according to this "rule of thumb" b/c you count kids the same as adults.)

3. Bills & Utilities: Our cell phone bill is $113 for both Michael and me- we use Sprint and we get unlimited everything so our bill is the same every month. We don't have a house phone. Our cable bill includes internet and DVR and is $69.31 every month. The condo we rent has an HOA and that HOA includes basic cable which we don't pay (the owners do) so that's why we can get expanded cable, internet, and DVR stuff for so cheap. Finally, SRP which is electricity. This bill is practically nothing for 8 months out of the year, so we're very lucky. There are 4 months or so of unbelievable heat and temps over 110 so our A/C runs non-stop. Our bill goes from $70 to $250.

4. Gas & Fuel: I budget $40/week for fuel.
5. Student Loan: My POS student loan payment of $106.36/month

6. Home Insurance: This is actually our renter's insurance bill we pay every 6 months, I just got the notice in the mail. It's $75 every 6 months... this is one of few bills that I don't save for monthly. I don't know why. I also got a $45/year premium notice last week for my jewelry insurance.

7. Service & Parts: I save $50/month for car repairs. Since our car is a beater and has 115,000 miles on it, something is bound to go wrong. This month, $30 of the $50 will go to an oil change, but the other $20 will go into our ING Savings account that is titled "Vehicle Repairs."

8. Personal Care: I save $50/month for personal care- this is me getting my hair done. I don't get my hair colored as often as I probably should, but it's just too damn expensive. I try to wait 3 months in between colorings so $150 for a cut, color, and eye brow waxing.

9. Spending Money: Michael gets $10/week for whatever he wants to do with it. The main reason for this is b/c I got sick of balancing the checkbook everytime he wanted to buy something and he didn't like always communicating every little purchase. So, it's handy for him to have some cash for whatever he wants.

10. Auto Insurance: We pay every 6 months but it works out to $35/month so I save this in ANOTHER ING savings account titled "Car Insurance."

11. Amusement: I just guess. I try to plan any nights out or dinner or a movie or whatever. I'm usually wrong, but if we go over, it's so minimal that it's usually not an issue.

12. Gift: This is different every month and it never fails that Michael forgets to tell me someone's birthday is. This $30 is $5 for a co-worker (we all throw in 5 bucks) and $25 for a gas card for the co-worker who gives me a ride home from work these days. A lot of people save monthly for Christmas gifts. We do not, but maybe we should. We don't spend a lot at that time of year like most people.

13. Shopping: Again, I try to plan this as much as possible. Michael's sunglasses broke. He just needs to replace the lenses so we budgeted $25.

14. Health & Fitness: Michael's gym membership at the fitness center near his work so he can exercise over his lunch break.

15. Movies & DVD's: We do Blockbuster online and this $18.40/month

16. $0 based items: The one thing with Mint is that if you don't have a category listed on your budget, but classify a transaction to that cateogory, it just won't show up. Yet to me, you're still "over" so I put a few recurring expenses as $0 (if unplanned) so I can see them each month.

17. Property taxes: Normally, each month we have to budget for property taxes for our MI home. Until last week, I didn't know how much this would be so I budgeted a lot. Since I over-saved, I did not have to save any more this month, but starting in August, our monthly budget will be $325.


As you probably read, I use ING Savings account to help me stay organized. I got this idea from someone and I love it. If you don't use ING and want to, let me know b/c we can each get a referral... but regardless, you totally should.

There are no fees at all and you can have as many accounts as you want. I have one for our "Emergency Fund", "Vehicle Repairs", "Car Insurance", "Personal Care, and "Property taxes." Each month I transfer the assigned amount from my checking at Bank of America to the appropriate account at ING.

When I make an appointment to get my hair done, for example, I transfer the amount back to my checking account and use my debit card.

Once we're debt free, I'll even have more accounts with titles such as, "New Furniture", "New Car", "Vacation Fund", etc.

Kelsalynn