One of the biggest headlines that I am reading this month is that inflation is out of control. Most grocery items have increased in price between 15 and 25 percent since January. The cost of gas has hit an all-time high but is slowly starting to decrease. I am not at all shocked by the numbers this month. I have spent a considerable amount of time reviewing the budget and planning but at this point I am going to wait until August to set the official budget for the remainder of the year. For the month of June and July, I am planning to offset any additional uncovered expenses with funds that are currently in our short-term savings. This should allow us to enjoy our annual beach trip and also get a better idea of what we are currently spending in order to develop a realistic budget. My car is currently in the shop and also needs a set of tires this month. So we have lots of small expenses to pay out.
Groceries– budget amount is $200 until June. Not Met! $1231.74 before the deposit on the cow which is an additional $300. I did have a significant food expense for the weekend of Haley’s wedding and I also have already purchased food for the beach. If I take the amount divide that by 5 people and 3 meals a day we are spending around $3.00 a meal per person which is still significantly less than I could purchase a meal any where for. This is definitely a hard category to budget for. I will continue to watch and average to determine where it ends up. My thoughts prior to this month were $700 a month but I am not sure how realistic that is at this point.
Auto/ Gas. My goal is $400 a month. NOT met! $759.80 gas. It is currently sitting around $4.34 a gallon. I will like have to double this budget in August depending on the cost of gas which means I will also need to reduce spending in other categories to make this work. I do not want to continue to use money from short term savings every month.
Cash Envelope system- We are back to use a majority cash system. I am hopeful that this will work even better in the Summer. This always works well for us!
Blogging- 15 post per month. This is post number 14 for the month. I have been much better at posting on a regular basis. Just need to squeeze in one additional post.
Exercise days- 2.
No Spend Days- ummmmm what ? I honestly have not been keeping track of this. One question I have is do I count days I spend from a budget category or only unplanned or over spending?
June was an interesting month. I am actually not surprised at all with the spending but really feel like we need to get a handle on where we can reduce our spending and where is it just going to have to increase the planned amount.