Our February Budget - Where Our Money Really Goes

[MomToTwoBoys]

Last month was a real shock to us. This month, well, isn't any better.

Here is our complete budget and includes every expense that we pay into. This does not include extracurricular expenses:

Income - $2970.95 (this is two paychecks, one pension and one tax credit)

Expenses - $2872.94

Remaining Cash - $98.01

Expenses:

Mortgage - $670
Utilities (Nat. Gas, Electricity, Water, Trash, Recycling, Sewer, etc.) - $320 (budgeted high due to the cold weather)
Shaw (Cable, Phone, Internet) - $110
Rogers (Cell Phone) - $100 (two phones)
VISA - $50 (minimum due to other debt payments)
Best Buy - $50 (more than minimum - $27 is minimum this month)
Inlaws' Loan - $400
Groceries - $600 (this includes the amount spent on the weekends for bread, milk and basics as well)
Gas - $120 (for DH to go to work and pick me up from the grocery store)
BMO - $48 (I actually paid $900 after the bill was made, so I can discount this if we need to)
Insurance - $122 (house and automotive)
Bank Fees - $16.45 (Account fees for DH, my account has no fees since it's a joint acct with FIL)
Hospitalization Coverage - $23.25 (this includes any possible expenses that any of us may incur that is not covered under both Alberta Health Care and SunLife Financial)
Property Tax - $111
Alarm System - $47.24 (this is our wireless alarm - necessity due to having a disabled child)
Lunch Program - $45 (this is for DS11 to have lunch at school - includes two snacks and a lunch)
Medication - $10 (DS11's Risperidol prescription)

We're extremely tight this month and we usually are in the winters. I budgeted higher for utilities because our last bill was $320 (it was high because of the cold weather). The one expense that's not in our budget this month compared to previous months is the gym membership. As of this month, that membership expires. I no longer need to pay the amount.

If money is extremely tight, I can omit the BMO payment because I paid a ton of money on the card. (It was $2400, now down to $1500) I budgeted higher for Best Buy, but the amount I need to pay is only $27. I may just pay the minimums this month on everything because that's all we can really afford.

We have no out-of-the-ordinary expenses this month because there's no birthdays coming up and for Valentine's Day, we usually do stuff at home. I'm working really hard on cutting down the food budget and may just end up buying nothing for the stockpile.

If I pay the minimums on everything, I can free up at least $100. That might be good for us. We get DH's income tax statement this month, so we'll be filing taxes towards the end of the month. We may not see any tax money until March, however, and that's not included into our budget because that's a separate amount for us to use towards home renovations.

If anyone can find anything wrong with this budget and find more wiggle room for us, that'd be awesome.

[mama2James]

Congrats on doing all the work to figure out your budget, that's a huge step.
I am concerned about savings? Do you have an e-fund? If you are able to free up a little wiggle room, could you put even $25/month away?
The other categories I see that you may be able to adjust are the cable, phone and internet, cell phone, utilities and the grocery bill. Can you drop down to a cheaper cable and internet plan? If you have the cell phones, do you need the home phones? Maybe keep just one cell phone or lower the minutes if you are in a contract? What might you be able to do to decrease your utility charges? Use fewer lights, less laundry, less frequent showers/baths, lower thermostat etc? Lastly, would you be able to cut back on the grocery budget? I know food prices vary everywhere, but maybe you can eat meatless more often, use leftovers more etc?
Things do seem really tight in your budget, but you are taking a step in the right direction. Try to make saving a priority so that you don't end up having to go into more debt when the inevitable unexpected expense crops up!

[MomToTwoBoys]

Congrats on doing all the work to figure out your budget, that's a huge step.
I am concerned about savings? Do you have an e-fund? If you are able to free up a little wiggle room, could you put even $25/month away?
The other categories I see that you may be able to adjust are the cable, phone and internet, cell phone, utilities and the grocery bill. Can you drop down to a cheaper cable and internet plan? If you have the cell phones, do you need the home phones? Maybe keep just one cell phone or lower the minutes if you are in a contract? What might you be able to do to decrease your utility charges? Use fewer lights, less laundry, less frequent showers/baths, lower thermostat etc? Lastly, would you be able to cut back on the grocery budget? I know food prices vary everywhere, but maybe you can eat meatless more often, use leftovers more etc?
Things do seem really tight in your budget, but you are taking a step in the right direction. Try to make saving a priority so that you don't end up having to go into more debt when the inevitable unexpected expense crops up!

Yep. We put $150 into savings last month. I have the ability to slide money from my checking into savings online, so I can tuck even $25 into it at the end of the month.

As far as the cable, internet and phone go, I've been debating dropping the cable down to a cheaper package. DH and I barely watch TV anymore, DS6 likes to play a lot of video games so he doesn't watch it much, but DS11 loves watching TV. I think if we went with the package that allows us enough of the channels that the kids watch, they'd be happy. I'd just add on Nickelodeon and Teletoon Retro to the basic package for DS11.

We have the home phone because our minutes are so restricted on the cell phone. They'd be even more restricted when we go to Pay As You Go, which we're doing when DH's cell phone plan expires in March. Mine is already expired, but we figured we could kill two birds with one stone and do it at once. I'll be removing my text messaging plan and taking off the extras, which will save us about $20 a month too.

I decided to start leaving the TV off after I watch Holmes on Homes, but I can also watch that on the internet too because HGTV.ca has full episodes of the shows I love to watch in the mornings (Disaster DIY, Holmes on Homes, Pure Design, etc.). I turn off all of the power strips for the TV and the computer downstairs, as well as leaving the lights off during the day and turning the heat down to 68 when it's above 0 outside. I cut down the amount of laundry we were doing to just one day a week now, unless by some chance something happens to our clothes (like wetting the bed, blood stains, etc - kids will be kids).

Our grocery budget is the worst since we're on a special diet. We do enough for meals that DH can take leftovers and when we eat meatless, we're absolutely starving for the rest of the night. Our diet's already harsh on us because now that we don't eat anything with gluten in it, the meals aren't as heavy in our stomachs and that's causing us to still be hungry afterwards. I switched to a lot of potatoes in our meals (homemade french fries, mashed potatoes, etc.) and almost all of my cooking is from scratch now. The issue is some of the costs are still high for us (pasta is a big one because it's all rice pasta) but I'm working on whittling that away. We switched to the slow cooker, so on the nights that we have certain items, I'll also use the rice cooker. That means less time with the oven on.

[itlw8]

I was wondering why the food was so high.

I bet you can bring that way down even gluten free.

make your own pasta using rice flour. hungry later on can you eat corn ? How about a bowl of popcorn not the microwave junk. plain cheap popcorn it is a great snack.

You will soon find not buying convience foods you can cut your budget and eat healthier.

[MomToTwoBoys]

I was wondering why the food was so high.

I bet you can bring that way down even gluten free.

make your own pasta using rice flour. hungry later on can you eat corn ? How about a bowl of popcorn not the microwave junk. plain cheap popcorn it is a great snack.

You will soon find not buying convience foods you can cut your budget and eat healthier.

I don't buy any convenience foods at all. Everything's scratch. All of our cooking is either in the crockpot, rice cooker or the oven.

We can eat corn, and the boys do eat popcorn when they want it. I buy the corn because I also grind it for corn meal.

I imagine that with some more tweaking, I can cut out pasta and see what I can make without using pasta that costs $2.69 per lb. Rice pasta is, however, arguably cheaper than whole wheat pasta.

[SixxOfDiamonds]

I have some CHEAP gluten-free recipes for you! We pay about $200-$250 a month for food (DH and I) and eat gluten free. But my laptop is about out of battery so I will PM you later.

[JoJoBean8]

I am a gluten free, sugar free, yeast free, and mold free diet so I understand the food being more expensive. The first few weeks by budget went up by $100. Now it is under $300 for the month. INstead of pasta try brown rice. Here I can get the store brand of brown rice for about 1.25 a bag and I use that instead of pasta and it works just as well. I also bought a steamer/rice cooker because it makes cooking the rice a breeze you just throw it in and forget it. If you would like some ideas feel free to message me.

[TheRootedNomad]

These may be things you've already thought through but just looking at the numbers here's where I would investigate....

~ reducing the grocery bill (and I do see where you are already looking at that)

~ looking into whether it's cheaper for your child to bring lunch

~ seeing if intrest wise, ability ect., you couldn't put the best buy balance onto the VISA giving you only one payment and still being able to make more headway (store cards generally have a higher intrest rate - but that may not be the case)

~ inlaws loan? how long is this for? and while I'd want to pay family off as quickly as possibly depending on other balances I might see about paying them a lesser amount until you get rid of a credit card after whch you could then pay them more, or maybe less in the winter months when heating is high and more in the summer when the bill is low. A lot of that would depend on how long I would need to finish paying it off and how much changing the amount would affect relationships or thier finances.

[MomToTwoBoys]

The lunch program thing caters to DS11's special diet. They make him a lot of meals that I could never make and then send to school with him. They also do life skills teachings during lunch, which is something we needed to start with him early on to help him out later. I'd thought about sending lunches with him, but he doesn't care for GF bread (homemade or otherwise) and they make him things like turkey dogs and GF tomato soup, pancakes, oatmeal, pizza, etc.

The inlaws loan is for when they helped us pay off the CCs last year. We started paying them back, then the holidays hit and after they were done, we got back to paying them off some more. We have $7700 left to go.

I had the cell phone amount reduced; I cancelled $22 worth of extras that I don't need anymore. We're combing through the grocery bill to see what we need, what we don't need and what we can substitute.

These may be things you've already thought through but just looking at the numbers here's where I would investigate....

~ reducing the grocery bill (and I do see where you are already looking at that)

~ looking into whether it's cheaper for your child to bring lunch

~ seeing if intrest wise, ability ect., you couldn't put the best buy balance onto the VISA giving you only one payment and still being able to make more headway (store cards generally have a higher intrest rate - but that may not be the case)

~ inlaws loan? how long is this for? and while I'd want to pay family off as quickly as possibly depending on other balances I might see about paying them a lesser amount until you get rid of a credit card after whch you could then pay them more, or maybe less in the winter months when heating is high and more in the summer when the bill is low. A lot of that would depend on how long I would need to finish paying it off and how much changing the amount would affect relationships or thier finances.

[SixxOfDiamonds]

I am a gluten free, sugar free, yeast free, and mold free diet so I understand the food being more expensive.

What type of diet do you eat? We are Paleolithic diet followers, no grains, no legumes, no dairy, no refined sugars, no potatoes, etc.

I'm interested when others eat a "radical" diet as well!

[MakeADollarHollar]

Some good advice already posted. I'll toss in my input.

The In-Laws loan. This is a huge expense. Can you re-negotiate a smaller payment until you get the other interest bearing credit cards paid off?

Bank Charges (total rip-off) - whatever kind of account your husband has find another if at all possible.

Cable Bill - pay the minimums on whatever you can this month and use the extra money to purchase board games, puzzles and/or crafts for the whole family. Next month, cancel or reduce the cable to a bare minimum. Use your spare time to play games with the family or entertain the one son with crafts or something educational in the morning before school instead of television. Figure out what he likes to do and play it up. Is he artistic? Let him paint or draw. Does he like to build things? Get him a monster set of Legg-O's or maybe some graph paper and some drawing tools. Is he musical? Find something affordable that he can play with.

Alarm System - I know you said this was a necessity because of a special needs child and I certainly don't mean to come off insensitive but this really is a luxury item. As long as you keep your phone active you shouldn't need the added expense of a security system.

Insurance - can you reduce your auto and homeowners insurance premiums? I recently changed our HO Insurance and saved us over $600 a year for an identical policy.

You are definitely on the right track because you've actually identified your expenditures. Keep it up. You will find ways to tweak it and find what works for you. Best of luck!

[MomToTwoBoys]

We have had some problems in the past with DS11 getting out of the house in the middle of the night (even with a lock on), so the alarm is a must-have. It's an even bigger must-have since we also had our van stolen from us a couple of years ago. It's not a luxury item for it; it's a necessity.

I talked to DH this morning about the cable. He's fine with reducing the cable package, but only as long as we can get the two channels he likes to watch (60 and 61, which are above what our previous and cheaper package was before - they weren't included). DS11 has three cartoon channels that he can watch, along with Saturday morning cartoons on ABC and NBC and CBS, so I'm sure that he'd be fine without 135 and 67 (which are also on the digital cable package). I only watch HGTV, which is in the basic package, and some of the news stuff when I get completely bored.

DS11 and DS6 are two completely different kids as far as likes and dislikes. DS11 likes using the computer and playing with the Wii, which is the same thing that DS6 likes to do. However, DS11 only really likes doing those things because they're more hands-on. I've bought him toys, crayons, coloring pencils, etc before but he's sort of shunned them off. He loves watching movies too.

We already reduced the insurance as much as we can. We were paying $160 last year; now we're paying $120.

DH has an account that he had FIL help him get last year. It doesn't charge him anything because it's a joint account. I think I'm going to push DH into finally transferring his payroll deposits into that account and close down the account with TD. We're also cancelling the hospitalization coverage, but keeping the life insurance. If we can't keep the life insurance coverage with TD, then we'll move it to SunLife Financial if we can.

Some good advice already posted. I'll toss in my input.

The In-Laws loan. This is a huge expense. Can you re-negotiate a smaller payment until you get the other interest bearing credit cards paid off?

Bank Charges (total rip-off) - whatever kind of account your husband has find another if at all possible.

Cable Bill - pay the minimums on whatever you can this month and use the extra money to purchase board games, puzzles and/or crafts for the whole family. Next month, cancel or reduce the cable to a bare minimum. Use your spare time to play games with the family or entertain the one son with crafts or something educational in the morning before school instead of television. Figure out what he likes to do and play it up. Is he artistic? Let him paint or draw. Does he like to build things? Get him a monster set of Legg-O's or maybe some graph paper and some drawing tools. Is he musical? Find something affordable that he can play with.

Alarm System - I know you said this was a necessity because of a special needs child and I certainly don't mean to come off insensitive but this really is a luxury item. As long as you keep your phone active you shouldn't need the added expense of a security system.

Insurance - can you reduce your auto and homeowners insurance premiums? I recently changed our HO Insurance and saved us over $600 a year for an identical policy.

You are definitely on the right track because you've actually identified your expenditures. Keep it up. You will find ways to tweak it and find what works for you. Best of luck!

[JoJoBean8]

What type of diet do you eat? We are Paleolithic diet followers, no grains, no legumes, no dairy, no refined sugars, no potatoes, etc.

I'm interested when others eat a "radical" diet as well!

I can have butter but no other dairy. I can have new potatoes. No sugar unless it's stevia. I can have none gluten grains. Lots of green veggies. The only fruits I am allowed are granny smith apples, cranberries ( yuck!), and lemons.

It would be so much easier except for the fact that I have a 2 year old. I am just so sick of reading ingredients. Until I started this diet I had no clue how much vinegar and citric acid were in things I ate. Those are two big no no's when you have Candida like me.

[krbshappy71]

I guess making adjustments depends on how desperate you are feeling about your current situation. Panic attacks at 3 a.m.? Or just wrestling trying to squeeze out some more extras?

First thing I slash is cable. I didn't have it for years, signed up for about a 1 1/2 yrs only to slash it out again. Completely. We have dvd's and vcr movies which I purchase at Goodwill for a buck or rent occasionally on Dollar Night. I watch tv on the computer as I'm fairly addicted to the internet. If my situation started to cause panic attacks, however, internet would be gone as well. Your husband is in this situation with you, surely he'd be willing to give up his two channels as a temporary solution? Say, six months?

Recently I called up and asked my cable company to help me out and they threw me on another promo for six months that is saving me $20 a month. (they are my internet) Doesn't sound like much but its over $100 by the end of the promo and I'll call again in the future. On dollar night at the video store, that's 20 movies a month we could rent.

Also, check your internet speeds, maybe you can downgrade for a bit to knock down that bill as well.

I really think it all depends on how desperate you are feeling in this current situation.

[MomToTwoBoys]

I don't think I've ever had a panic attack at 3am over money. I grew up with barely any money, so I guess I'm handling this a lot better than I could be.

That being said, DH and I had another money discussion last night. I'd say I get concerned, especially when we don't have that much leftover cash after bills are paid. But we both look at it this way:

We have a house.
We have food in our cabinets.
We have clothes on our backs.
We have a way for DH to get to work.
We are able to heat our house, have running water and can turn on the light when it gets dark outside.

I don't think we're in the same situation as a lot of people, but then again, we're also not living in a cushy scenario. DH told me, "Hon, I don't need a whole lot of money." and that made me feel better. We decided that as long as we're not in the negative, we'll be ok.

We just have a lot of debt to squash. That much debt comes with a lot of heavy feeling on our shoulders.

I think I'd be more concerned if we were in the red. I'd also be more concerned if we were pulling from overdraft to cover bills. We'd been there in the past, and I'll tell you that it's no way to live. We climbed out of several holes before. This one won't be different.

I almost chuckle at the people who kept nitpicking at us for our financial choices. It's happened before and well, I wasn't aware that my choices in life had to be judged by others.

After another review of the budget, we'll be fine. We just have some more hurdles to overcome and by examining the budget now, we can hopefully cut out more extras before the end of the year.

I guess making adjustments depends on how desperate you are feeling about your current situation. Panic attacks at 3 a.m.? Or just wrestling trying to squeeze out some more extras?

First thing I slash is cable. I didn't have it for years, signed up for about a 1 1/2 yrs only to slash it out again. Completely. We have dvd's and vcr movies which I purchase at Goodwill for a buck or rent occasionally on Dollar Night. I watch tv on the computer as I'm fairly addicted to the internet. If my situation started to cause panic attacks, however, internet would be gone as well. Your husband is in this situation with you, surely he'd be willing to give up his two channels as a temporary solution? Say, six months?

Recently I called up and asked my cable company to help me out and they threw me on another promo for six months that is saving me $20 a month. (they are my internet) Doesn't sound like much but its over $100 by the end of the promo and I'll call again in the future. On dollar night at the video store, that's 20 movies a month we could rent.

Also, check your internet speeds, maybe you can downgrade for a bit to knock down that bill as well.

I really think it all depends on how desperate you are feeling in this current situation.