Just want to make sure I am not making any large mistakes, or any ways I could be handling my funds better. I track everything on a excel custom made spreadsheet.
Income
- $15/hr, paid on the 1st/15th, 40hr workweek, usually have about an hour of overtime each paycheck
- Qtrly bonus of up to $500 based of work performance and company perfomance
Monthly Budgeted Expenses
- Bills - $350
- Gas - $120
- Groceries - $400 (household of 2)
- Food - $100
- Misc - $200
- Gifts - $200
- Clothing - $50
- Pet - $150
- Health - $30
(Bills include $150-$200 Electric Bill, $35 Gym Membership, $85 Phone Bill, 99cent Apple iCloud Storage, $10 Adobe membership, $12.99 Amazon Prime Membership) Car Insurance is paid semi-annually, and no car payment.
Retirement
- 7% into a Roth 401k, $1.4k balance (recently opened)
- 3% match by employer
Savings
- $5.2k Emergency Fund Capital One 360, with $200 monthly contribution
- $1k Quick Grab Emergency Fund, with $200 monthly contribution
- $300 in a Christmas Club, with $40 monthly contribution
- $500 in a Laptop Goal Fund, with $100 monthly contribution, only needs $200 more before Laptop can be purchased, after this, contributions will be lowered to $50 monthly for a Pre-Engagement Wedding Fund.
Debt
- Capital One CC - $300 balance, will be paying off on next paycheck in a week. $8.5k CL
I am finding that I frequently go over budget on groceries (household of 2), but it's also to do with the fact I order my meat in bulk from the butcher store, and that will last us a few months. Sometimes I buy meats here and there, sometimes I will drop $500 on the spot on meat and not have to buy it for a while... Need to tighten up on the frivolous food spending at Walmart though.
The Gifts monthly expense, isn't an actual monthly expense, just a little extra padding for when birthdays/holidays do come up.
Pet expense will lower also, we just have a new puppy and they are always costly at first.
Goals
- Get my retirement contribution percentage up, to total 15% being contributed.
- Get my Emergency Fund to 15k, then stop contributing, and only contribute to the Quick Grab Emergency Fund (so halving the amount I save monthly)
- Get 5k saved in the Wedding Fund
Anything else I need to be doing, or should be doing differently? I know that I should be upping my retirement BEFORE my actual savings, but I went through 7k on my last 3month jobless stint, so I want to have that and then some just in case I am ever in that position again.
Submitted April 06, 2018 at 10:13AM by PopularMud https://ift.tt/2HdOnkh
