July 3rd, 2020 at 02:46 PM by Monkey Mama
A quote from my blog May 10, 2020:
I commented in another blog that we aren't experiencing any +/- in our spending. A lot of it is having a bare bones budget to begin with. We are clearly using a lot less cell data (on wifi 100% now) but that might save us $4 this month ($1 per line). My commute has decreased a little bit, so my electric fuel spending might be $20 instead of $25. It's just stuff like that.
Other comments I apparently made elsewhere:
--Our grocery spending has only gone up with kids home 24/7 and inability to shop more carefully (just making do with whatever we can find). {We can no longer find family sized peanut butter, just as a random example. I have no idea when we will ever get our generic TP back}.
--Although I hadn't noticed any difference in our monthly spending, I expected more of our annual expenses to decrease (things like auto insurance or vacation spending).
As the year is half way over, I decided to sit down and see how things were shaking out compared to last year.
Income: Same as last year
Kind of hard to believe, because I was working two jobs the first half of 2019. But the lack of side income in 2020 has been offset by a raise, stimulus, and large unemployment checks.
So... pretty much all the extra income without the extra work.
Expenses:
Auto Fuel (Electric) -$14 (as expected; driving about 20% less)
Auto Fuel (Gas) -$300
What surprises me about this is that MH hasn't gotten gas since April 1. ??? Though he drove to work every day in May!? I expect he probably only drove to work 3 days per week (used electric car the days I worked from home) and his commute is only 3 miles each way. It makes sense. Usually he does a lot more trips back and forth dropping off and picking up kids. It may be a very short commute, but it is a lot of back and forth. This is not just a short term gain. This will be our reality very soon, once both kids are self sufficient drivers. I honestly don't know how much we will be even driving DL(14) to school this next school year. No doubt this will save a lot of wear and tear on our gas car (more of the bigger "annual savings" that I was envisioning). Current school plan for DL is to only have to be on campus 2 days per week, and they are expecting to (realistically) be closed one quarter during peak flu season. He turns 15 next week, so we get off easy during our last year of "driving kids around".
Groceries +$600
Up $200/month since pandemic, which makes sense.
Offset by spending $250 less on school lunches
Honestly, I am surprised that's it. It feels like our grocery spending is completely absurd. I think this is offset by a lot of "doing without and making do".
**Fuel/Food spending ends up being a wash**
Vacation Spending -$2,700
$2,700 was our entire 2019 spending (spent during the first half of 2019). I expect to spend -$0- this year.
Edited to add: Our annual family camp trip was canceled. 😞 We have decided to go to the family cabin for a weekend, near Tahoe. It's awful that we don't remember the last time we took the kids there. They are excited about it. No firm plans yet, but probably some time this month. It won't take much planning. It's in the same vicinity as camp, so we figured it was the next best thing. Cost to us will be: -$0-. Maybe $5 for fuel to get there and back. I am not going to bother recording that $5 under the "vacation" category. 😉
Medical Expenses -$6,600
Last year we had spent $4k on braces and we usually max out our medical deductible on MH's MRIs. I think in this case he is just not due for an MRI yet, but I also expect they may be pushing off less "medically necessary" appointments.
Other Expenses ~ Breakeven
Net worth and assets are stagnant. Which is better than I hoped for a few months ago.
[ Read More ]
Posted in Monkey Mama*s Monkey Money Blog |
3 Comments »
