I’m going to start writing a new series on the blog. (That
makes me laugh, no one reads this but me, so who is this series really for?) At
the beginning of each month I’m going to write a post detailing all the
“unexpected” expenses we have each month. I’ll call it Unusual Expenses for
___________________ (fill in the month).
Each month, we all have “unexpected” expenses, but are they
really unexpected? No, they are just unplanned for. I know that we need to come
up with money for car registrations from January to April. I know we need
haircuts. I know The Kids need new clothes and shoes. These things pop up
occasionally and I need to start planning for them and making sure to include
them in my budget for each month.
Some upcoming expenses we need to plan for in March are: car
registrations (X2), a haircut for The Boy, family birthday parties we are
hosting, The Husband’s birthday, and new baseball equipment (cleats, bag,
uniform, bat) for The Boy.
The car registrations are already taken care of. The money
for those will come from our planned annual expenses account. (Side note: if we
buy a new home, we might need to reallocate how much money that we put into
that account, depending on how we do taxes and insurance.)
In our March budget, I allocated money towards “haircare”.
This will easily take care of The Boy’s haircut, leaving plenty of money to put
towards The Girl’s hair care needs in May. On average, we need to include money
towards haircuts for The Boy every month. He keeps his hair relatively short so
he gets it cut every 5 weeks or so.
In March, we are hosting the family birthdays for my family.
We have about 35-40 people coming over for dinner, cake, and ice cream. I will
need to plan accordingly. We will do something relatively inexpensive for food…
like spaghetti. We will need spaghetti, meatballs, sauce, salad, and bread.
That will probably be about $125. We will also need to buy ice cream and soda.
This will probably run us another $75. On my next two trips to Costco, I will
start to buy the things we need for the party, thus spreading out the cost. I
will still spend $200, but my plan is not to spend it all at once. (Our last
trip to Costco was very expensive; we went well over budget. I don’t foresee
super expensive trips in the near future so we should be able to add the food
needed to the party without incurring too much hardship.) I also padded out
grocery budget by $100 for the month. I put an extra $50 towards groceries for
each of our budgeting periods. We are putting slightly less towards debt, but
we aren’t accruing any more debt. And, with any leftover grocery money, it can
go towards debt payment at the end of the month.
The Husband’s birthday is in March. I will need to get him a
gift. We will also go out to dinner for his birthday. On his actual birthday,
we are going to an NBA game. We will need money for this too. We are driving,
but we will buy a quick dinner that night and maybe some snacks at the game. (I
have no idea what I’m going to get my husband for his birthday… He is so hard
to shop for!!! Any ideas? J)
Lastly, for March, baseball season is starting up. I know
The Boy needs new cleats. He wore his last pair for two seasons and now they
are too small. Along those lines, as he has grown, his bat is now too small for
him, so he needs a new bat. He may or may not need a new uniform, we aren’t
sure, it depends on what team he is and what color pants, socks, and belt they
choose. We already bought him a new baseball bag. They were on sale on some
website for $7 plus tax and shipping. We paid about $15. Not too bad. It’s
actually the first new bag he’s ever had. His first season of baseball he used
a hand-me down bag of his cousin’s and then his second year he used his dad’s
bag from 30 years ago. I didn’t mind this purchase. And I was very happy to
find baseball bags on sale for such a cheap price.
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