March's Unusual Spending: A Recap

How did we do on anticipating unusual expenses in March? Not too shabby, but not too well, either.

I forgot about football registration; and that was expensive!!! $365 to be exact. On the plus side, my retro check was more than expected so it more than covered the big oops. Without the overage in my retro check, I don’t know how we would have paid for football.

I also forgot about baseball pictures. They ran us $30 after taxes. We did still have $20 in our “kids’ activities” envelope, so only $10 was unfunded. We will continue to fund that envelope as the year progresses. Ideally, there will start to be enough in that envelope that forgotten expenses don’t become budget busters.

I still have $100 in our “hair care” envelope. I had budgeted money for The Boy’s haircut, but he got hot one night at baseball practice and I came home to a boy with a “number 2” all over his head. I will continue to fund this category because I want to give The Girl highlights for her birthday and I don’t think The Boy’s number 2 will last. He will start to grow his hair out and we will need to get it cut monthly again. Lastly, I am in dire need of a haircut so some of the money will go towards that.

I am proud to say that even with hosting family birthdays, we didn’t bust our budget (yet). Food was covered. We also needed to buy napkins and paper plates. We served, as planned, spaghetti with meatballs, salad, and bread. We still have $230 in our food budget to last the remainder of this budget period, which is still almost two weeks. We should be able to last just fine. I’m glad I added an extra $100 to our grocery budget for the month. In and of itself, that $100 was not enough, but we were able to scrimp a little here and save a little there, so it worked out.

The Husband’s birthday was in March and I was able to buy his birthday gift with money pulled from our food category. (His birthday gift, was in fact, food. I spent $75 on food he very specifically asked for.)

Lastly, we had baseball stuff we needed to buy for The Boy. We only had to spend a minimal amount due to the fact that the team is wearing the same color as he wore last year. We also found a great deal on a baseball bag. Last, but not least, we redeemed Amazon gift cards to buy his bat.

Overall, we did well estimating and funding our unusual expenses for March. However, what we forgot was expensive. Luckily, thanks to my retro check being larger than expected, nothing was really a budget buster. But going forward, we need to be better. Hopefully, going forward we will also have better funded envelopes that can cover any oversights.