anthonyimages
We had more little expenses that added up fast with car registration, hospital bills (from having a healthy baby girl), we spent $200 on an emergency breast pump (don’t ask), not to mention starting our mini renovation and the list goes on and on. We normally budget $100 for miscellaneous expenses and this month all those little things added up to $1300! OUCH! Since we moved to California a year ago, I am still amazed at how expensive the cost of living is here. Even with moderate usage, our utility bills alone can get as high as $500 in the summer. We also have a pool for the first time and had no idea how expensive it would be to maintain.
I know some people are able to pay cash for a home (Money Saving Mom is a great example of this) and I always hear people on Dave’s show that are debt free including the house- I wonder if this is possible in a super high cost of living area like CA?
The good news is we paid cash for everything and we had fully expected this month to be a financial challenge and we were prepared. I am amazed at how much we were able to add to savings even with the extra expenses.
So we are now 66% of the way to our goal of 6 months of expenses in savings. I am extremely anxious to finish this so we can start tackling the last student loan. Once that is finished we will be totally debt free except the house.
To get ourselves back on track after a lot of spending in May, we have declared June no spend month. We have done no spend months in the past as a way to start fresh and refocus on our goals and it has always been effective for us. So for June we intend to eliminate all extra spending entirely. We will have our regular monthly bills, gas and grocery budget and the only “extra” will be a haircut for my husband.
If you are curious about doing your own No Spend month -check out Amy’s No Spend Challenge. I will keep you posted weekly with our progress- we have a lot of graduations, birthdays etc.. coming up so it should be interesting to see if we can stay on track.
I had a no spend month last year and it was awesome! I am itching to do another one. Way to go on your savings.
Have you ever thought about cutting your husband's hair? My mom always did that when I was growing up. She cut my brothers too. Not that she was bad at all:) but in high school my brother learned how to cut his own including the back of his hair! Amazing. I still believe that he does it to this day. You would be suprised how well you can do. My sister has cut her husband's hair (he's in the military now) and cuts her boy's hair. That's 6 heads of hair that she has saved on:) Just a thought;)
Michelle
I regularly have "no-spend days," but hadn't considered a whole month!