Budget Recap - October 2006
October was the first fully funded month of combined finances and I’m still working out how to best share this information. I may have to create an alternate system as I get more comfortable with YNAB budgeting program – it has advantages and disadvantages that I’m still working through.
Our monthly budget is much more detailed than what is shown. I’ve displayed some basic categories and categories showing activity. As our income streams increase, I’ll break out the income from salary, ebay sales, etc.
One thing to note is that YNAB forces you to budget all of your income. If you overspend in a category, it doesn’t reduce your current available funds (as I would expect), but instead reduces next month’s available funds. Also, if you underspend, your current available funds remain the same and that category has a surplus of funds next month. Because we’re getting used to this system, our budget was reworked several times to allocate all of the income and to adjust to overspending/underspending. So what you’re seeing is more a representation of what we spent and the results of reworking the budget to match actual spending instead of a true reflection of how well we budgeted. I may have to rework this system if I find we constantly have to rework the budget at the end of the month.
General Comments: Savings were intentionally unfunded. Due to early payments in September, only two credit cards were included in October spending – November will get an additional payment and, hopefully, some found money spending. Gas budget was originally set for $400 – commuting allowed me to have one tank of gas last for over a month. Eating out was under the original $200 budget but more than my $150 goal.
Spending: We underspent by $64.07 for October 2006!!!