I mentioned several times during the month of June that it was one of the most expensive month that we have seen in a long, long time. I am going to go into a little bit more detail in regards to some of the things that helped bust the June budget. If you missed how bad I did for the month, you can always see it in black and white here.
One of the unexplained increased expenses was gas. During the month, I can not pin point any extra mileage that we had, there are no long trips. However, we were way over in our gas for the month. In addition to the extra gas money that was spent, my car also is in need of repair work. In fact, we spent over $110 of our July gas budget today to make some repairs. My hope is that with the repairs, I will gain at least a few miles per gallon and help reduce the overall expense. This summer, the kids have been super busy with something going on each day so that would probably account for the extra gas if I really wanted to figure it out.
Groceries are a much easier explanation in regards to the overage for the month. Looking at the numbers, I am over $200 over for the month but this does include a LARGE meat purchase that should last around 3-6 months in combination with the two orders from Zaycon foods that I will be picking up in the next several months. In addition to this purchase, I did purchase about 1/2 of the food for Kendall’s party during this month as well. I am been able to maintain an average spending of $610 a month for the year until this month. My goal is that with the meat purchases in addition to a lot of fresh veggies from the garden, I can lower at least the July grocery spending.
Summer activities are next on my list of June budget busters. During the summer, we are involved in several different activities that when looked at over the whole summer are relatively inexpensive however, each of these requires initial cost and most were covered entirely in the month of June. The list of these activities include pool membership, swim team and swim team meets, and piano lessons. Because this is the first time we have taken piano lessons, the purchase of a used keyboard and materials were also undertaken in June.
Finally on the list of budget busters for June is the purchase of a new dryer. Over the past several months, our current dryer which is 6 years old has slowly stopped working. It is taking 2 and 3 cycles to dry most clothes. In addition to the extra electricity that we are using to dry the clothes, it has started making very loud noises. Our electric bill crept up this month from $163 in May to $211 in July. I know that the dryer is not the entire cause of the increase but it can’t be helping matters either. Matt and I have discussed the dryer situation several times and he has attempted easier fixes such as cleaning out the hose. Nothing has worked. The last dryer that was purchased was an emergency one. Kendall was barely two weeks old and it stopped so we were forced to purchase a dryer on credit. I did not want to find ourselves in the same situation again so we decided to do some shopping. I currently have a Home Depot credit card and over the past month have received several promotional offers for no interest if paid in 12 months. Using a similar promotion, in the past we have purchased a lawn mower and flooring. I am very proud to say that I have not paid any interest to Home Depot in 2 years so I feel very comfortable saying that I will complete this offer in the same way. Interesting enough, I am scheduled to make the final payment on the card in July. After looking several place and doing some research on the best options, we chose a dryer that was on sale for $599. It will be delivered on Saturday! I am hopefully that this will actually help our budget in the long run and will plan on paying off the dryer in 7 months just in case I need to stretch out some payments.
I have been some time today looking at our July budget and am very optimistic that it will not contain any more budget busters!
