Our Budget - Month Five

I really am loving documenting our budget this year. But wow, do we spend way more than I think sometimes. Budgeting is hard. We have only met our budget of $2,000 a month TWICE so far. And this is month five--and we didn't meet it! We didn't even come close.

So what did we spend?

Bills  ($602.99)

• Netflix: We still have our $7.99 netflix account
• Internet: We pay 60.00 for internet a month. It's expensive, but they only offer one service in our area. Our internet went up 10.
• YMCA: 75.00 for our gym membership--we have a family memebership now that includs Brian, me and Reuben
• Phones: 25.00 a month for two phones with unlimited text and talk, no data.
• Electric bill: $150 this month.
• Water: $60 
• Audible: $22.95

We also signed up for Amazon prime this month, so I will add that in for a one time bill charge. It was $99--and we also renewed the license plates on my car for $108. These are not reoccurring charges for next month, thank goodness!

Baby Expenses ($180.84)

This month we bought a jogging stroller and a big toy for Reuben. The toy? A huge U-haul box. Does he love it? YES! The stroller has been awesome on our walks, but it only fits in daddy's car. It's so smooth through!

Food ($936.69)

• Eating Out:194.36
• Brian's Lunch at Work:30.66
• Grocery Shopping: 711.67

We ate out a lot this month. Brian's lunch budget is low because I started packing his lunch, woot! He's enjoying his box lunches so far. We only went $200 over our grochery shopping budget (we try to keep it around $500 a month) but that's okay. We ate well, and I enjoyed cooking.
 
Gas ($76)

Brian spent $56 in gas and I spent $20. Yay, driving!

Personal Money (Brian $900, Carolynn $431)

I'm afraid all our "overage" went into personal money this month. Brian spent A LOT on Amazon as well as eating out by himself (counts as personal money when we are by ourselves). I can't remember exactly everything he purchased. He bought a bunch of breathing things--like stuff that measures your lung capacity and so forth, as well as two pairs of headphones (one wireless) and even a breathing technique book. Suffering from air hunger (feeling like you can't breathe even when you are) is not fun. I hope we can find out what is causing all his weird symptoms soon. As for me, I bought two pairs of fall boots, a stitchfix box (I kept three things) and a couple of natural cleaning and kitchen products from mightynest.com, as well as a few pieces of clothing at Old Navy.

Other ($363.44)

We have hired a babysitter every week for four hours. She is amazing and worth her weight in GOLD. Really. She's $40 a week for four hours. These are the hours I look forward to every week! I love my squish, but mama loves her alone time too. She was here three times this month, so $120.

We also had to work on my car and spent $58.44. I needed windshield wipers and something else done to it... Brian bought the parts and did the work. He's also worth his weight in gold too, haha.

We had one doctor's bill for Brian that was $185.

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All in all we spent $3,500. That's a lot; and almost as much as we make a month! I'm glad this is not the norm but an odd month out. Here is to trying again next month: I still hope we can one day consistently hit our budget.

The 2016 budget series:

January 17th - February 16th
Feb 17th - March 16 
March 17-April 16th
April 17th-May 16th 
May 17th-June16th