Budgets and big ticket items

[geekette]

Attempting to create a budget.  Looking at last year, we had a lot of "one offs" - and I suspect most do.  Sick cats, new roof, replace 17 year old car with a 7 year old car...  How do you put this sort of thing in your budget?  A huge "misc" category you hope you won't spend?

I'm trying to cram last year's $58k into about $35k in the next year, all while adding about $11k in COBRA payments.  Whee!

[Joel]

I plan for those unexpected expenses just like anything else, saving money up in categories for each of the different purposes.

I do this using YNAB.

[geekette]

We have the money saved up (early 50's, $1m+ net worth).  I'm trying to get a handle on our minimum needs going forward in case my husband doesn't get a replacement job. 

I see people happily living off the proceeds of less than we have, but I haven't seen line items for odd stuff.

[Will]

I use YNAB as well.  With the money you have saved up (which is of course different than your net worth), create categories and then budget whatever amount you feel comfortable with?  Create a "pet expenses" category and put in however much you think you'll need ($500? 1000?  YOU decide).  Do the same with everything else.  Car replacement: $200/month?  Car repairs?  $50/month?   Home repairs?  1% of the home's value/year or something similar.  It is all up to you.  Fund them all at once, or spread them all out.  But I would NOT recommend one gigantic Miscellaneous category.  Again, YNAB makes it easy for you to be as broad or as granular as you'd like.

[gooki]

I put down $2,000 a year for unexpected expenses.

As for actually putting the money somewhere, I don't bother. Any expense like this comes out of our emergency fund.

[geekette]

Sounds reasonable - thanks.

[chicagomeg]

I put it into my budget every month & use PNC Virtual Wallet's "Wishlist" feature to keep the buckets of money. It might be overkill, but I like it. I have sinking funds for the car ($40, as ours is new & this is mostly oil changes & registration/parking sticker), dogs ($130/month, which goes about half to food and half to vet expenses as they come up), travel (varies, based on whatever trip we're planning, but is minimum $200/month to account for camping trips, visits home to mom & dad, etc.), and gifts ($125/month).

[lauren_knows]

We don't specifically "budget".  We keep close track of things in Mint, and have viewed our average over the last few years.  One-off items just get lumped in with the average, and I use that overall average for any sort of retirement planning or simulations.