Unusual Spending for July

Just like all the other summer months, July is going to be expensive.

Because I'm a teacher, we spend our summer days gallivanting all around Northern California going here or there. And it gets expensive. We also take our family vacation in the summer, again, because I'm a teacher. (I would love to travel in the off-peak time, but until I retire, that's just not feasible.)

In the month of July, we expect to have to pay for: school supplies for the coming school year, first-day-of-school outfits (including new shoes) for each of The Kids, car insurance for the next year, and our summer vacation. We don't have a whole lot of extra expenses, but what we have is going to be pricey.

Luckily, for a lot of this stuff, we have money in our budget envelopes. As always, I don't think it will be enough, but it will definitely be enough to defray some of the costs.

We need to buy new school supplies for each of The Kids. They each need a new backpack, binders, pens, pencils, art supplies, etc. and The Girl also needs a new lunch box. I also need school supplies for my classroom. Mainly I just need to buy all new art supplies: scissors, colored pens and pencils, and some crayons. Usually I also need writing pens and pencils, however last year I received a generous donation from my father-in-law's work, so I am covered in that area. Typically, we tend to need binder paper and copy paper and some notebooks as well. We try to buy them at the beginning of the school year when stores have the best sales. We actually have over $400 sitting in our "school" envelope, so we might be able to cover all our needs with that money, but backpacks can be very expensive so we will have to wait and see.

We don't go out and buy all new school clothes at the beginning of the school year, because it's so hot when we start school, The Kids don't need them yet. We do, however, let each kid pick out a new outfit and pair of shoes for the first day of school. I have been trying to fund our "clothes" envelope to pay for these items, but I can never fund that envelope as quickly as we spend it! We currently have just over $400 in this envelope as well and I think it should be enough money to get what both of The Kids need. The Boy often wears a pair of shorts he already owns and just picks out a new shirt. The Girl always wants the whole she-bang! I think we might have enough money for first-day-of-school outfits this year, but we will need to continue funding this envelope as they will need "cold-weather" clothes in a few months.

Our car insurance policy is up in July and we are switching our insurance providers. With our old provider, we had to pay our premiums every six months, with the new provider, you pay for 12 months at a time. We are going to pay the whole years premiums at once. We do have the option to pay monthly, but with that option, we pay interest. We currently have around $2000 in our annual expenses account, but our premiums are almost $3000. We have to make up the difference. And it's an expensive difference. We will have to cover the extra money using our savings account (not our emergency fund, which stands at about $1850, but using profits from the sale of the old house). We won't have the same issue next year.

Our last unusual expense for the month of July is going to be our family vacation. We will be traveling for two weeks throughout the Southwest United States. We will visit several national parks, museums, and create a ton of memories. We will be paying for it with money that would normally go to pay our mortgage. Our first mortgage payment in the new house isn't due until August 1. So we are going to pay for our vacation with the money we aren't using for a mortgage. Essentially, my June paycheck, which would usually be for a mortgage payment, is instead funding our trip. We will actually charge everything for the trip and just pay for it when we get home. The money will just sit in the bank until we are ready to use it.  Because this is a road trip, about 6-8 weeks ago, we started setting aside all of our left-over gas money at the end of each budget period. We currently have $330 for gas on the trip. (We will also have money leftover from the week we leave and we have budgeted money for while we are on the trip.) We are hoping that having the gas money will help defray some of the costs for our vacation!

Overall, we don't have a lot of unusual expenses, mostly because we are spending half the month on vacation, but what we have has the potential to be very expensive. I really hope we can keep the costs down!