August 2016: Our Money went where?

August, what a great month! It’s my birthday month, yeah Leo’s, it starts the slow trend toward cooler weather around here (it’s still supposed to be 92 today), and now we have school starting to add to the list for August since our oldest started kindergarten this year. How did all this affect our spending though? There were some minor upticks in spending due to kindergarten, life, and oh yes, the allure of a new grocery store. For the full report out and comparison spending chart read on.

Spent more than usual

Groceries came in a bit higher partially due to a new grocery store opening up very close by, and partially from the fact that we now have to make and send in lunches for our oldest to take to kindergarten. This shouldn’t be a big increase, but Mrs. SSC did some stocking up on some items in preparation for this. Maybe some extra spending for my birthday cake supplies? Mrs. SSC asked what kind of cake I wanted and I said “wedding cake!” She’ll never ask again, but she did make this beautiful one below.

What a lovely birthday Wedding cake. Hahahaha
What a lovely birthday Wedding cake. Hahahaha

Spending in general was a bit higher, also buoyed from school supplies which we don’t normally buy. While Mrs. SSC did shop around and get most stuff at a great deal, it’s still more than typical. We also bought 2 new booster seats for our oldest and those were about $68 each. Yipe! That still seems like an anomalously high spike in spending though.

Daycare was high because of a 5 Monday month, but will start to go down now due to free public school that one of our kids is attending. He still does aftercare, but the cost is way lower. Yeah our live near a good public school plan is working!

TV/Internet is high because of overbilling by AT&T. Evidently, when I called to cancel in July and they said, “Okay we’ll cancel your service, sorry to see you go” (it was really more of a 20 minute sales pitch as to why I wouldn’t “not cancel” – so annoying) they didn’t actually cancel anything. Yep, we still got billed in August and got a notice for a bill due in September. I resolved it yesterday and in the next 20 days we’ll get a refund for our “unused internet” we were billed for, but still… It’s a great reminder that Autopay sucks (as Mrs. SSC puts it) and if we weren’t tracking our bills, the $72 may have gotten lost in the wash for longer than 1 extra month.

Gym is up due to paying for kids swim lessons and not getting the stipend from my work yet. It covers my portion of our family plan or about $56/month. Thanks work!

The usual suspects...
The usual suspects…

Spent less than usual

Autos are still way down, like almost half, so that’s been nice.

Pet costs are down – no shots or checkups or emergencies to deal with. Although our oldest dog (~16 yrs) is having more days that remind us she’s close to 16 yrs old than days where she’s still bouncing around with her tongue hanging out.

 

Best News

Shockingly we had a surplus of about $1900 this month. That was with no paycheck from Mrs. SSC even. She won’t get paid until Oct. 1st, but she is now officially on the payroll, hahahaha. The great news from this is that we managed our spending and investing enough to weather that lack of pay and beat our projected $300/mo surplus. Woohoo! What does this mean? Starting next month, we won’t need a stockpile of such a huge emergency fund and we can start boosting our investments back up.

 

FFLC Cost Projections

How does this shake out with our FFLC cost projections (which is all just voodoo and black magic guessing if you ask me)?  This months’ spend was about on par for our FFLC costs. Accounting for the removal of things we won’t be doing in FFLC like mortgage, daycare, cleaning service, etc… we are looking at about $3500 spend for the month. 12 months of that would stick us at ~$42k/yr which is on par with our FFLC projection of about $49k. Using a simple 4% rule would set our target at ~$1.225 million, with a paid off house – but feel free to tell me if I’m wrong in those calculations. Better to know now right?

 

Hope your August went well and you didn’t have any major financial surprises (unless they’re the good kind like lottery winnings, casino jackpot score, long lost relative bequeaths you their entire debt free expensive estate, you get the idea)