The ups, downs, and occasional sideways bits of trying to be mortgage free

armchairexpert

Nothing at all going on to report here. We're in between pay days, YNAB is a mess because of all the expenses out and there's little I can do about it. Mr E is sending me a blizzard of links to ceiling fans, which we need in our bedroom but I cannot muster up any enthusiasm to care about.

Trundling on!

armchairexpert

Logging into YNAB is so depressing this month, with this sea of red. I feel a bit bad about it - even with all the extra unavoidable expenses, we should have been able to break even with a bit of self discipline. But it was also half term, and my hair was months overdue for a cut, and a few hot days showed us that we really need a ceiling fan in our bedroom, and suddenly here we are, $550 in the red. Oh, and I accidentally paid the quarterly water bill twice, so there's that.

Anyway. Today we should hopefully find out how much of Mr E's overtime gets approved as paid overtime and how much he has to take as flexi. Either way we'll get $800, which is the living allowance reimbursement that's compulsory for them to pay. He spent $200 on work clothes to go out there (it's fairly specific clothing, not just everyday work shirts or whatever, but it doesn't get paid for by the company because it's not logo'd or anything), plus $200 on groceries to take with him, plus another $150 on meals and drinks for the days when they were still mid-journey, so almost all of that will get eaten up by that. Anything extra will be gratefully received, though.

brizzledfw

I know the feeling...our household category is SO in the red, a few others too. Luckily some are well in the green so we may be OK, or I will just push the problem into next month and carry forward.

Hope the OT comes good

Brizzle x

armchairexpert

Am I right that either you or your partner have a lot of work trips and work expenses, brizzle? Do you set that up as a separate category in your budget? We so rarely have this problem - if Mr E's away on a short trip he takes the corporate card - that I don't really know the best way to handle it.

armchairexpert

Mr E's normal pay came through today but neither the reimbursement nor the overtime came with it. Boo. That means it'll be the first pay in November, which counts towards December income, which seems like a long time.

But! I created a new YNAB category for work expenses, and I went through and recategorised everything that counted and then set it to subtract from next month's income, so it can literally just roll along indefinitely (since we'll always have a buffer of more than that in one category or another) and now it doesn't bother me so much. That means I've been able to allocate his salary normally this month and I feel like we're back on an even keel.

It's an expensive month in a couple of regards: we're coming up to the end of the school year, which means ballet recitals and end of year concerts and birthday parties galore. Some of it's just little things, like bring-a-plate stuff, but there's so many that it adds up fast. I have some money aside for this, but not enough, so my excess went there instead of into savings/overpayment this month.

This is the effect of starting the budget at the beginning of the school year: I need the summer holidays to build up a buffer, so I've been running behind on school/extra curricular costs ever since February.

In fact, I don't think there's been one month yet where our income and outgoings have actually matched our forecast. I'm really convinced this is why YNAB works so much better than a traditional budget. We are constantly rolling with the punches. Some of those will even out as I learn more about our true expenses, and we roll over that first year mark, but I bet it'll never be the case that we always have the projected income and expenses. I'm glad I started budgeting this way.

armchairexpert

Mr E dental appointment this morning, and now we're overspent on the medical budget by $200. I'd already budgeted a huge amount because I knew he had a procedure coming up that would cost $500, so I chucked in $300 each month for the last two, but it wasn't enough. I feel like my feet keep getting pulled out from under me. I've put my income up by $1K a month and I'm still constantly juggling. I'm thoroughly fed up with it.

Tahlullah

Try to keep the faith. I know it gets hard but you are persevering and that takes a lot of doing.

Certainly, I am no paragon of virtue on this matter. I have stepped away for a while because like you, I see no end to the battle and I know I need to regroup and come back fighting when I feel I can. But in the interim, I am still trying to budget the YNAB way, just not obsessively. I'm just not overpaying my mortgage the way I want because the everyday expenses keep getting in the way, despite my budgeting.

So, get Christmas out of the way for me and start again in the new year.

I hope you manage to get on the even keel you are searching for.

mfmaybe

armchairexpert wrote: »

Mr E dental appointment this morning, and now we're overspent on the medical budget by $200. I'd already budgeted a huge amount because I knew he had a procedure coming up that would cost $500, so I chucked in $300 each month for the last two, but it wasn't enough. I feel like my feet keep getting pulled out from under me. I've put my income up by $1K a month and I'm still constantly juggling. I'm thoroughly fed up with it.

I'm certainly no saint on this either; but when I finally got around to sorting out my overdraft and paying off various debts, it took longer than I thought. I've maybe posted this before, but it turned out I was totally burying my head in the sand about the true nature of all my expenses - the "big bills" as I call them, the things that aren't the utilities DD, but are the medical stuff or the car repairs or the replacement electronics or the birthday parties. And I think it takes a long time to get from being behind on these things to on top of, or even, ahead. There will come a point where it's a quieter month and you'll suddenly feel more in control; or a bill is less than you thought, or the pots will just be comfortably topped up and it will all feel a bit routine. You'll put $100/month into the dental pot for ever more and it will all be a bit boring

armchairexpert

mfmaybe wrote: »

I'm certainly no saint on this either; but when I finally got around to sorting out my overdraft and paying off various debts, it took longer than I thought. I've maybe posted this before, but it turned out I was totally burying my head in the sand about the true nature of all my expenses - the "big bills" as I call them, the things that aren't the utilities DD, but are the medical stuff or the car repairs or the replacement electronics or the birthday parties. And I think it takes a long time to get from being behind on these things to on top of, or even, ahead. There will come a point where it's a quieter month and you'll suddenly feel more in control; or a bill is less than you thought, or the pots will just be comfortably topped up and it will all feel a bit routine. You'll put $100/month into the dental pot for ever more and it will all be a bit boring

This is exactly right, and thank you for the encouragement. And what used to happen is that those big bills got written off as "oh, just a bad month" and it's really been eye opening to see that it's every month that at least one of them happens! I am trying to keep the faith, and increase the amounts I thought I needed in each pot so we can build buffers. But of course, every time I do that, the amount we have "left over" dwindles.

What's depressing me is that I still haven't built up a proper emergency fund buffer. I want at least $1K, plus $500 in each of the two house pots to pay for smallish repair jobs/tradespeople, so $2K all up. As of the end of November I have a paltry $600, which'll get wiped out with one or two standard repairs.

And we haven't had a holiday since January, and that one was pretty cheap, and I'm supposed to be saving up for next July so we can go to Tasmania and play in the snow. That's going to cost about $7K for all four of us, I think, done cheaply-but-not-staying-in-youth-hostels, and I have $860. Even if I put half of this upcoming overtime towards it (the other half has to go on my Mum's unit) that's still over $5K short.

I mean I'd like to say "hey, we're living within our means, and we've managed to put aside enough for Christmas and even a tiny savings fund, hurrah" but we're a double income family, we should be able to take a week's holiday once every couple of years.

armchairexpert

Almost at the end of the month! Today's a good day: a few weeks ago I landed a new client who was going to account for a fair proportion of my income and mean I could permanently increase my contribution to the household account. And then she disappeared without signing anything, and I've been scrambling to make up the difference. Anyway, today she reappeared and it looks like all systems go, so phew.

Pushing Mr E to chase up some of his medical reimbursements that seem to have disappeared: it's almost $200, so worth the effort. I can't believe how much we (he) has spent on medical costs this year! None of it's very dire, but he's seen three specialists for three different things and ended up with minor hospital procedures for two of them. We do have a government healthcare system, but our subsidies don't cover the whole cost, so there's a gap payment due for each.

Nothing else to report! We had a very cheap weekend - Big Girl had her first ever sleepover party to go to, Little Girl and I did some sewing and painting, and I did a huge clear out of my study which is now a nicer place to be. Unless we suddenly need $100 worth of groceries before tomorrow we'll come in under our grocery budget for the first time ever.