As you all know we spent the last couple months of 2014 trying to get back on track and get prepared for our baby boy who's coming in March so we will be continuing to refine and get things ready and part of that is sticking close to the budget we have come to normalize as our own.
It's so surreal to think that my little kicker will be in my arms in less than 90 days. The sleepless nights will be worth it just to meet and hold him. I'm so excited to be his mom... But we have a few things we need to hash out before Eli gets here.
Service My Car:
My car hit 95,000 miles at the end of December so we have it scheduled to come in for what we hope is just routine maintenance since we depleted our car repair fund at the end of 2014 with South County Boys car. Depending on what it costs us (hopefully just an oil change)... this may take all of our disposable income for the month.
Emergency Fund
While I'm really proud we were able to get our emergency fund $2 grand higher in 2014, we need to add some more cash to it before this baby gets here... or at least before we need to start day care payments. We need to add about $2,000 to the emergency fund to bring it to a 6 months level, considering the baby.
I would love to set aside $500.00 a month for the next 4 months to make it happen by the end of April when he's here.
Food Storage:
While I'm going to be adding pantry items into our regular grocery budget each month to build a rotating amount, I have really depleted our stock by letting some items just go bad or making it impossible to eat them all before they will go bad (we donated some non-expired food we knew we wouldn't get to in December to a food pantry). Now that I'm regularly cooking again, we need to re-stock our pantry and also start to get some good freezer meals set aside to make Eli's arrival a little easier on us when we are sleep deprived.
It's also just smart to stock up on some long term basics in case money gets tight when we start to pay for Daycare half way through the year.We normally don't buy and eat a ton of processed foods but every other year or so we generally purchase some can goods/boxed foods that we keep on hand in case of emergencies. If we don't get to rotate them into our regular food, they end up getting donated before they go bad.
Some items will be picked up at Costco and Walmart and will just go in our regular budget, but we also believe in storing food long term for emergencies, so we will buy some items from the Church Cannery and Emergency Essentials. These items won't be in our regular grocery allotment because they aren't really rotated into our regular food at this point. Each year we just try to add a few more long term items so this will come out of hubby's checks.
January Budget:
Regular Spending:
- Mortgage (P&I, Property taxes) $771.99
- Giving $596.00
- Fast Offering $20.00
- Groceries & House Hold Items $300.00
- Date Nights $100.00
- Pocket Money for the month- SCB $40.00
- Pocket Money for the month- SCG $40.00
- cell phone allowance $60.00
- HOA $295.00
- Utility Bills $150.00
- Gasoline/Auto $250.00
- Discretionary Spending $103.97
- Roxy Fund $50.00
- Prescriptions & Doctors visits $50.00
- Birthday savings $50.00
- Insurance $157.99
- Christmas savings $50.00
- Vacation Savings $100.00
- Car Emergency Fund $100.00
- Car Registration Fund $25.00
- Emergency Fund $275.00
Additional Disposable income until the baby comes: $1,040.00
- Service "Stitch" The Camry
- Send $225 to Emergency Fund for $500 total for January
- Purchase long term Food Storage
Additional Leftover Money (in no particular order):
Purging and Carpet Cleaning:
If we still have some extra money in the budget left over this month, we will get the carpets cleaned since we will continue purging the condo since we normally go through everything in January to help us pair down and create space and our carpets haven't been cleaned... ever...
Roxy:
We also need to spend some money on Roxy. She needs to have a good dental cleaning done, and possibly some gland checking/emptying so she stops butt rubbing on our carpet... Our Vet wants $500 just to clean her teeth so we are hunting around for something more affordable and will give ourselves January to hunt around and price check...
Delivery Charges:
Our baby is covered but we will end up shelling our $300-$400 in random hospital expenses to take him home, so we need to set this money aside...
Doctors Visits for Eli:
Depending on any complications with delivery, Eli will either go on my insurance or hubs. If he comes out without any issues, we will put him on hubs insurance since it saves us a ton on premiums... if he needs time in the hospital or is having any development or health concerns he's going on the Kaiser plan. If he's health, we know we will need to pay more for his initial doctors visits the first couple of months on hubs insurance so we should put aside some extra money for this as well.
Have you looked at Banfield's pet program? We use them for our 10 year old dog (she's in great health, but tends to get into *something* once a year). For $49-ish/month, it includes all her shots, heartworm meds, a yearly teeth cleaning, any and all vet visits and something like 30-40% off meds or any procedures. Every year I go back over our account and look at what our old vet would have charged and we come out ahead. we also like that we can go to any banfield anywhere - since we travel quite a bit it's nice to know we have a vet nearby. Might be something to look into.
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