Blogging Away Debt Our Journeys to a Debt-Free Life

by Ashley

Let’s just jump right to it, shall we?

Also, full disclosure….as I was making this month’s budget update I realized I never made one for December! Yikes! How did no one point this out/remind me? In full honesty, I feel too rushed for time as it is to go back and write a post from last month so I’m just picking back up here and moving forward.

Comments:

Gift-Giving: I paid for 3 birthday and 1 belated Christmas gift with that $107, so I felt like I’d done pretty well considering how many gifts were purchased.

Personal Maintenance: This is for some hair care products I bought. It’s been FOREVER since I’ve bought anything related to my hair (with the exception of hair dye since I cut and color my own hair), so I didn’t think this was too bad. I bought a deep conditioning treatment thing and a new flat brush since my old one has been falling apart for months.

Restaurants: This was super high this month (and was last month too, even though I never did a budget update last month – doh!), and it’s because this includes a bunch of eating out expenses from when we were out of town. Remember that this year we traveled back to Texas in late December and stayed until the first week of January. Some of those expenses, of course, were in December, but some fell in the month of January too. So that’s why this was so high.

Entertainment:  $6 was from the girls riding on those giant animal things they have in malls (know what I’m talking about? No? Nevermind then). The remainder was from a DATE NIGHT that hubs and I took! Wahoo for that! I’m warning you now, I’m really committed to trying to have more regular date-nights this year so you’ll see a higher entertainment budget this year than in the past 2 years of blogging. We’re shooting for every-other-month, but we’ve already got plans for Valentines, so we’ll be going back-to-back January and February.

Groceries:  This was also a monstrous sized number! I stocked up on a ton of snack-type foods for the girls that I send with them to preschool (e.g., pretzels, cheese crackers, fruit leather, trail mix, juice boxes, etc. etc.) and I’m hoping/planning that those things will last at least 2 months, so our February grocery budget should be much more reasonable.

Household Goods: This includes some batteries we needed for remotes and kid toys.

Clothing:  I’m still budgeting roughly $100/month for building up a work wardrobe. I’m getting to be pretty good on this, though. I’m still trying to find some decent khaki pants (I’ve tried on a few different pair from a couple different places in the mall, but wasn’t crazy about anything), but once the pants are purchased I think I’ll have all my staples and I’ll reduce this budget down to probably closer to $40/month just to fill in with a new blouse or cardigan once a month or so.

Health: This is from a prescription

Rainy Day Savings:  I don’t really like the category because it’s really not a “rainy day savings” (I need to adjust my YNAB a bit), but this is for the girls’ college savings. We save $25/month per child ($50/total) toward college. I’d hoped to save a bit more toward our car repair fund, annual fees fund, etc., but at the end of the month we just didn’t have the money there, as we’d spent it on getting rid of the car loans (wooo!!!!) We’ll focus a lot harder on this category in February.

Savings Goals:  Similar to the rainy day savings, we just didn’t have money this month for any of our long-term savings goals. You’ll notice that I actually put a negative number there in the table! I actually withdrew $120 from the Cruise 2016 fund. I paid for one plane ticket (I will be traveling separately from the rest of the family because I can’t take off extra time to stay in Texas like hubs and the girls plan to do), and I bought a new swimsuit. I plan to use this money for all cruise-related expenses so I’ll be spending a big chunk this month (when I pay off our remaining balance), and this is where I’ll be spending when I buy cruise-related clothing or other necessities (as opposed to having it come from the regular clothing our household budget).**Edited to add:  I realized without additional context this amount seems off. The plane ticket I bought was only $75 because I already had an airline credit. The remaining $45 was for a swimsuit. PRO tip:  Mix & Match!! I bought a swimsuit bottom from one site because it was cute, my size, and on clearance. I bought the top from another site for the same reasons. They’re both black so, even though they’re different brands, they definitely look like a matching pair. But it’d be possible to mix-and-match patterns, too. The point is that if you look around, you can score some great deals! The swimsuit full price would’ve been about $100. The bottom was from Albion Fit and the top was from Victoria’s Secret (both a bit pricey in swimwear), but buying off-season and clearance saved me a ton. That’s my tip of the day. : )

Debt:  I gave a full debt update here.

So I think that’s it. I’m excited about the month ahead!

I hope you are all starting off to a fantastic February!

Ashley

Hi, I’m Ashley! Arizonan on paper, Texan at heart. Lover of running, blogging, and all things cheeeeese. Freshly 40, married mother of two, working in academia. Trying to finally (finally!) pay off that ridiculous 6-digit student loan debt!