Our monthly budget for the year - 2019

It took a couple of paychecks coming in for the year to get what our baseline for 2019 would be. Why did we have to wait for a few checks? Well for starters, I finished being a "Temporary Supervisor" at work at the end of December, so my first January paycheck had that temporary increase... and For 2019 we decided to open a dependent savings account to help us cover the cost of daycare by having it deducted from our paychecks so we could use pre-tax $$ instead of after tax $$, so it took all of January to figure out what my take home pay would be.

This year we are putting $5,000 into our dependent savings account. We did the math and with the current tax brackets, etc. we realized we won't loose anything by having the funds deducted, versus taking the $600 credit at the end of the year on our taxes, and we may get more financial benefit having the funds deducted... So this is the year we are test driving that plan. We can only deduct $5,000 from our paychecks, (and we clearly pay more than that a year) but its better than nothing.

We also made some annual adjustments based on last years actual spending.

First, a few notes on how we budget and use $$$:

We budget as though we each get paid twice a month, however, both Hubs and I both get paid bi-weekly, so there are 4 months a year where we get an "extra" paycheck because we get paid on opposite weeks.

• These "extra" checks are dropped straight into savings and aren't spent. 
• For 2019, we are dropping these funds into our car replacement savings account. We hope by the end of 2019 to have a little over $20,000 saved so we have the funds to replace one of our vehicles in cash should the need arise. 

We were able to get the car replacement fund account up to $11,000 by the end of the year (starting with around $5,000). So we are hoping to save $4,000 more than last year in 2019 and cash flow any repairs with our slush fund.

We also "pad" our checking account with at least $1,000 to cover transactions and purchases that might hit our account before the paycheck that actually pays them arrives. Right now we have more cash in there than normal (the $1k buffer is closer to $7k) since that is because we have some home improvement funds parked there for convenience. We typically put all of our expenses on a credit card and then I pay the card off at the end of each week.

Any annual bill we have, we break it down into monthly amounts and stick that $$$$ into savings so we have the funds to pay them when they come due. So we don't have any "oops" we have to pay our 6-month car insurance premiums moments.

• Lumping everything into one "savings category" doesn't work for my brain. I need to see it having its own line item so I don't "borrow" it for something else so we have like 16 savings accounts.

My husband also gets a "once a year bonus" called profit-share. We never budget as though these funds will come our way because if the store doesn't earn a profit, there is no bonus... and that has happened to a few locations in the past, and after the great recession hit before he worked there. I guess we just don't want to be the family that NEEDS profit-share to pay the bills (some of his co-workers are in this situation and the stories are not pleasant). We prefer to live more modestly and sleep at night not worrying that we are "over spent" and living on credit cards most of year hoping the bonus will be big enough to pay it off and "start over." When these funds DO come our way, we use them to replenish savings (like we do our tax return), including our "Slush" fund from which we pull from for car repairs, home improvement, and other larger projects we agree we want to do, including extra spending that isn't in the monthly budget.

I also have the option of selling back some of my un-used vacation and sick time. Last year was the first year we sold back time, and we are planning to do so again. We looked at which months were extra paychecks months and knowing we typically get funds coming in February (tax return) and March (Profit share) we should get these funds in June as a mid year bump to our savings.

Retirement & Health Benefits

I have a pension with a set formula... and I pay a certain percentage of my salary to fund it each month AND I don't pay into social security, (and won't be eligible for it). I  also dump some funds into a 457 to get my employer match as we don't leave free $$ on the table.

Hubs does the same with his matching Roth 401k (my retirement funds are taxable, so we are balancing this with having his retirement funds be a tax free option). He also contributes more than the match since he doesn't have a pension or a formal retirement outside of his 457 and pays social security.

Since everyone always argues about how much to save for retirement, and what "counts" here's what it looks like:

• If we add my pension payments, his 401 k, my 457, our employer matches, and the money he's putting toward social security, we set aside about 16.66% last year.  
• If we remove the matching contributions, were at around 13.66%... 
• and if we don't count social security, we are at 10.9%

Eventually we would like to increase our retirement by funding our ROTH IRAs, but we have not contributed to them since we found out we were having little dude because daycare is expensive... AND we need to save cash for replacement vehicles as our cars are both 15+ years old. (we drive 2004's which were bought used. They ain't pretty but they run for now, but parts are hard to find).

Health benefits are deducted from my paychecks, so you won't see line items for health insurance, dental, etc but we have them. We have switched back over to Kaiser for the year. We also don't list our our tax withholding and just publish our budget with the money that HITS our checking account so below figures are based on after tax and deduction income.

Phew.... Now, onto our basic monthly budget!   

Tithe/Giving/Fast Offerings: $714.00
Mortgage (P&I): $764.00
Property Tax Savings: $285.00
HOA: $367.50
Electricity: $100.00
Groceries: $350.00
Gasoline / Car Washes / Tolls / Registration: $306.33
Daycare/Preschool: $910.00
Discretionary Purchases (things, including stuff for the house, etc): $100.00
Pocket Money: $80.00 ($40 each, this is our blow money no questions asked)
Clothing savings: $50.00
Insurance Savings: $192.00
Doctors, Dogs, Haircuts, Grooming: $100.00
Birthdays/Gifts: $50.18
Christmas Savings: $100.00
Little Dude expenses: $86.83
Audible & Netflix: $24.52
Internet: $64.00
Eating Out/family activities: $100.00
Cell phone: $70.00
New Car savings: $413.00

What's different?

• We are doubling the funds for Christmas! Not necessarily for gifts, but to cover increased spending that happens at the end of the year. This should help us with black Friday shopping for the house which isn't necessary gifts, but taking advantage of sales for things we need.
• Sure some extra for holiday "snacks" and personal ornaments we like to get each year will be nice. We also typically buy practical items for stocking stuffers like razor blades, tooth brushes, etc.
• Providing a slight increase for groceries because food costs naturally rise.
• We don't have a line item for car repairs. We have added extra money to our gas fund, but since we are saving $400 a month for car replacement, we are hoping to pull repairs from the slush fund.

Our cell phones normally only run us $20 a month on average, but my work provides me $70 after taxes a month to maintain a cell. We transfer un-used funds each month into a savings account and we use this $$$ for phones and charge cables, etc...  but when that account reaches a certain point ($1K) we will stop adding funds to it and will divert these to additional savings. I know it sounds silly, but it will always be budgeted as "cell phones" in case they decide to stop providing this benefit. I used to get cell service and data paid, but they did some department changes and took away the data funds, leaving me reimbursement for calls only, which is why I won't label these funds for anything else in the budget, since when my "data" money went away, it was like loosing 4% of in monthly income....