April's Unusual Spending Recap

As far as estimating unusual expenses for April, we did pretty well. I think being gone for fully 1/3 of the month and selling our house actually helped us out here. Obviously, if you’re gone, you aren’t going to have any unexpected spending at home; and we were so focused on readying/selling our house we didn’t have much time left for anything else.

The final numbers aren’t in yet, but it looks like we aren’t going to add to our credit card debt, even with our trip to D.C. We also aren’t going to decrease it by much either, but I’m counting this as a win. I’m looking at it as we were able to pay for our whole D.C. trip without adding to our debt. We covered air fare, hotel, rental car, food, souvenirs, and attractions without adding more debt! (This will be helped by the overtime The Husband received for being on a business trip, but still a win!)

Both our car registration and our property taxes were paid out of a separate account that we use strictly for budgeting purposes, so that was simple. The money accumulates in our yearly expenses account, and we spend it as necessary.

It was a pretty good month for “unusual expenses”. I estimated them pretty well and we were able to pay them. Nothing popped up during the month that busted our budget and that’s always nice to see.

It seems that every month, there’s something! Whether it’s a routine payment or something that came totally out of the blue, there’s always some “unusual spending” every month. I would love to have a normal month with no extra expenses and an easy budget. But, alas, that’s not the way it works.

I will continue to try to forecast any unusual spending and budget for it whenever possible.