April was our first month of married life working off a real budget. For the first several months of marriage we just winged it. I knew where our money was coming from and where it was going and I reported everything to Bird at the end of the month.
But we really wanted to get serious about saving for a house (hopefully buying in 2011 or 2012), so we decided to set up a budget and you know I had a lot of fun doing that. I checked out a bunch of different websites and helpful tools like a budget calculator.
I won’t bore you with the details, but I’m happy to report that we were under budget in April by almost $160. That leftover will go into the downpayment fund.
April was a pretty typical budget month, but there are a few special things in May that we need to account for. We’re going to just go ahead and increase the Miscellaneous category from $300 in April to $500 for May. We are using May to take care of the upcoming wedding season expenses.
Bird’s best friend is getting married in July, but Bird will be hosting a shower and a bachelorette party for her this month. We also will be attending a couple’s shower for her next month and then the wedding is in July. We’re just going to take care of all the gifts this month. We have a May wedding to buy a gift for, as well as another July wedding. There are other miscellaneous expenses in May like Mother’s Day and my birthday. We don’t have a specific gift category in the budget, so all this gets categorized as Miscellaneous, which is why we had to up it to a guesstimated $500 making it the second largest category after Mortgage/Rent.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Seems like you are on track, especially with being $160 under, why would you want to increase that? While I understand your increases in spending seems like you can achieve this with that extra $160.
The gifts can really add up, for sure. It’s a good idea to budget for it now.