Monday, January 10, 2011

Budget

I don't know how many people do budgets.  I do a budget but more to see where all our money goes, than to actually stay within certain amounts each month.  That's not to say we wouldn't like to try, but it never seems to happen.
So a few things I notice after finishing last years budget.  Ummm can you say house poor!  We spend 50% of our income on the house between mortgage payments and improvements.  Now the hope would be at some point we will be done with the improvements, but unfortunately we haven't even begun to hit the more expensive ones of kitchen, bathrooms, and basement, not to mentions some upcoming projects for Bella of a new front porch with ramp and a main floor master and handicap bathroom.
The next biggest chunk goes to our vehicles.  We are currently paying off one vehicle at an accelerated rate, so that probably has a lot to do with the percentage we devote to it.  Granted it should go way down in another year.  That's if I can continue to talk Jesse out of buying a new bigger vehicle, we know at some point we will need it as Bella's equipment grows, but I'm hoping we can hold out for a few years.
You can tell we like our vacations as we have a large budget for traveling.  Granted that counts our big yearly vacation, trips for weddings (we had one in Chicago and one is St. Louis) and then our many trips back to Nebraska to see family.
Some surprising finds, we spend more on entertainment, eating out, and at Target than we do on groceries.  Might have to redo some things there.  And also our charities/church is no where near the 10% mark.  We will also be working on that this coming year.  And lastly we didn't have a category for savings, because with all our home improvements and paying off the vehicle, we weren't able to save anything this past year.  In fact we spent $1k more than we made.  I would like to save this year, but we plan to get the car paid off first, so we will see.

Well that was our budget for the last year.  How did yours stack up?

2 comments:

  1. I LOVE that Target gets its own category!

    We are close to paying off a vehicle and need to up our charitable contributions as well...always room for improvement I guess :)

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  2. I am very impressed by your budget. I know what you mean about paying cars off We will be done with all of them next month, maybe we can know what it feels like to not make huge payments and keep that money ? Brent may becoming a substitue teacher though so he can quit his job. Just hope things stay the way they are with me at b&v. Otherwise we are hosed.

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