Did you miss me, darlings? Hehe. I am in the middle of some challenging events these days and I apologize for the abrupt departure. I will be back in full force soon, and will update on my challenges. In the meanwhile I just had to pop in and pull the alarm.
My expenses will be increasing soon, and my income decreasing. *dramatic swoon!* I wanted to see if there was a way to squeeze enough out of my already tight and mustachian budget to help with some of these changes. There really wasn't. But wait...
On most of my bills that are variable, I use an average in my budget. Good for me! However, I have always been a little generous in my averages to make sure that I always have enough. I do. I also was rounding up on monthly savings for things like car insurance and property taxes. I decided to really, really dig into those and calculate the REAL, actual averages/amounts I need for those, and to cover three new necessary expenses that I am about to incur monthly. The goal? $67 per month. I was overgenerous in my averages (monthly) on five bills by $35 (what the...!), $11, $11, $12, and $15. Grand total ... $84. I haven't exactly pissed away ALL of that, some of it is in a Utilities subsavings account to help pay for winter heating and also represents small leftovers in my Taxes and Insurance subsavings account. But I do piss away some of it from checking each month, and now I have a more accurate picture. I can afford to aim properly at these bills, if they are a little higher, I can cover it. But they are always, always lower than I budget for. And I need those dollars now.
YOUR challenge is to do the same thing if you have numbers in your budget to placehold for variable bills. How many little dollars can you find not doing what you meant for them to? Where are they? How accurate are your averages? Go look through the last two years of those utilities and other bills and see what the average REALLY is. Update your budget, and report your number here.
Eighty flippin' four dollars a month. I just got a raise. :)