Wednesday, April 2, 2014

April Budget

Old wardrobe/chest of drawers.
Now that the Roth IRA for SCB is out of the way, we will be focusing on a more "fun" and smaller goal to keep hubbs on the money saving game plan... and hopefully avoid "cranky" man for a little while longer because he's much more awesome when he's not cranky man.

The reality of the matter is that we both know we need to take our cars in for oil changes and check-ups in April...  we should have done it last month... but the idea of starting the $1,000 car repair fund & servicing our cars isn't that "fun" and I don't want to get off track. 

So for April we are going to take our cars in and get them checked out (and we will fix anything that needs to be fixed...) but then we need to focus on something that's more fun.


Welcome operation re-due our bedroom! 
If you remember back to Christmas, my mom bought us a new wardrobe so we could replace our wooden chest of drawers. Most of the knobs were broken off, and one of the drawer's tracks was busted.... and it was a horrible use of space. This thing held all of SCB's clothes, minus the stuff he hung up in our walk in closet (shirts, pants, Sunday clothes, etc.) 

So instead we replaced it with a white unit from Ikea. What was great about the new wardrobe was that it took up the same floor space as his old drawers, but we also were able to fit all of the clothes that were in the drawers into the smaller more space saving drawers.... AND move 98% of his clothes from the walk-in closet to this as well... (Only his Sunday shirts are in the closet right now... and they technically fit in his closet, but he doesn't want to put them in there next to his "screen tee's" for some reason right now.) 

How did we get so much in there? Look how tall that sucker is. It goes almost to our ceiling, and all that extra vertical space allowed us to hang up all his clothes in the new wardrobe. The bottom drawer is actually empty right now too since he prefers to just fold his pants and put them underneath his shirts so he doesn't have to "bend down" so much. 

Our next step in operation "re-do" our bedroom is to purchase an identical until for me to place on the other side of our bed and get rid of our bulky dresser/mirror combo. The drawers are so small in our existing dresser that it's really a waste of space to keep it... especially when every ounce of floor space is precious in our tiny little condo. We are hoping that in addition to moving all my items out of the dresser, we will be able to move all my clothes out of our walk-in closet as well. Since my stuff is shorter than SCB's, we think we can get one of those "split bars" so you can make a partial a row of clothes can hang beneath the main bar since even my longest dress fits in SCB's closet with the way he set it up right now. 

Then a new white bed frame to match.....

And April is SCB's birthday, so its sure to be a fun month!


April Budget:
Spending
Mortgage: $771.99
Church Tithe: $580.00
Other Church offerings: $40.00
Groceries/Household Items: $300.00
Date Nights & Eating Out: $100.00
Pocket Money ($40 each): $80.00
Cell Phone Work Reimbursement: $60.00
HOA: $270.00
Utility Bills: $150.00 (Second cell, Electricity, Internet)
Gasoline: $250.00
Discretionary: $174.95

Savings
Christmas Savings: $50.00
Birthday/gifts Savings: $50.00
Vacation Savings: $100
Car Registration Savings: $25.00
Roth IRA: $275.00
Insurance Savings: $143.00
Prescriptions/Doctors Visits: $50.00
Roxy (Dog) Savings Account: $50.00
Car Repair Fund/New Bedroom Furniture: $1,000.00

5 comments:

  1. Then you have room for baby in a couple years!!!

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    1. YUP!!!!!!!!!!!! once the place is set up, trying for a midget will be much more realistic.

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  2. You've inspired me to be more organized with my budget especially at the current time/situation! I noticed that we're both in O.C (south county?), and i'm currently looking to see how i can get a better cell plan (700 minutes shared between two lines/250 minutes shared is no longer working for us)...I noticed that your cell plan is only at $35 per month. Can you disclose some information about what type of cell carrier, plan, or tips you have?

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    1. Budgets seem scary at first, but then you find out that they are this little secret weapon that lets you spend money on things you want... but also save for the future. Good luck with that!

      As for cell phone, My husband has a trac phone. He got the phone off amazon. This one is $25, but there are cheaper more basic ones for $15

      http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T404G-Prepaid-Minutes-Tracfone/dp/B005O1I7T6/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1396560754&sr=8-19&keywords=tracfone+triple+minutes+for+life+phone

      All we do is do down to Walmart and buy the minute cards. 60 minutes is $20, but with a triple minute phone we get 240 minutes. He gets 3 text messages for the cost of 1 minute so we fill his phone up only when he runs out, or when the minutes expire (if you add minutes before your balance is up, they roll over and you keep them).

      So on average, its really cheap for us to get him his phone. It doesn't do data, but he has an old smart phone that he leaves on Wifi and uses that for apps.

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    2. For me, my work pays for my cell phone which is the only reason I have a smart phone. (Its actually $60.00 a month for mine, but its covered by the money they add on to each paycheck).

      My phone is a prepaid through Verizon. I get 2 gigs of data, unlimited talk and text, no contract, and no taxes or other fees... just $60 a month for service.

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