April Finance Check: Where Tertiary Education Is Expensive
Time for my April finance check! I’ve come to enjoy the accountability of these posts and writing down a budget every month. This month was expensive as I had some university expenses due, plus some car issues. But, there was also some unexpected extra money coming in, which balanced the month out pretty nicely.
How did the March budget go
Overall I’m pretty happy with how my March budget worked out.
First of all, I received my year end Working for Families Tax Credit square up, it was about $1,648 because they hadn’t paid Best Start Tax Credits for my oldest daughter while I was on maternity leave with my youngest.
So that was a very nice bonus, and very needed considering the university fees that were due and the money I had taken out of our sleep out savings to cover the first certificate course.
I had budgeted $1,080 for university fees in March. This included about $935 on the second certificate course, $45 on the course material for it, and $100 to finish paying of the course books I needed for the bachelor. In total I spent $1,073.61 in university fees.
StudyLink also paid for the rest of the courses in bachelor’s degree. So I now know the final balance on my student loan. It is a whopping $36,500 (give or take a little bit)! This of course on top of my Finnish student loan, which is still about $7,000.
I had quite a few budget categories that came under budget this month, which is great! For example subscriptions which ended up being $215 instead of $380. This was because my PayPal didn’t let me know about the failed payment, so Skillshare cancelled my membership. They then sent me a re-join offer with something like 60% off! Well, I snapped that up straightaway!
I also came under on groceries ($181.71 instead of $300), takeaways ($38.30 instead of $50) and power ($121.70 instead of $160).
I had a flat tire in my car, and all of the tires pretty bald, so we needed to get 4 tires for me. The quote in Taranaki was $500 for used tires, so my partner went to Auckland to get me cheaper ones with new rims. That was $350 and he asked me to cover $200, which I did. So I went over budget in my gas/car category ($317.56 instead of $100).
I also really overspent at my regular cafe, giving them $111 of my money in March, instead of the target of $70. Ups. Main reason for such heavy overspending was because I started to buy donuts again with every coffee, rather than just the coffee, plus I treated the rest of the family to donuts as well three times this month. Not sure what to do about this! I wonder if I should just accept it.
My other spending was a tad under the target at $193.26 ($200 budgeted). It went to some Warehouse shopping ($39.26), Toy Library subscription ($35 for the year, perk of being a committee member), osteopath ($105), ice cream truck ($12) and TradeMe selling costs ($2).
All up I spent $3,897.12 in March, which was a tad under budget ($3,994.12). Very happy with it, especially happily surprised by the Working for Families end of year square up to cover the course fee and my shares of the tires.
Finance check: Savings progress
March was an awesome month for saving, I saved a whopping $1,085! I managed this because I finished another parcel of $250 and received the Working for Families tax credit square up.
Emergency fund
My emergency fund sits now at $100, which means I saved that amount in March and I’m really happy about it! Having money there motivates me to save more in there,
I’m considering moving it to my RaboBank to keep it a bit more out of sight but still readily accessible.
RaboBank also has higher interest rates on their savings accounts compared to BNZ.
Sleep out
The sleep out account sits at about $6,355 now, yay! $470 out of $1,085 went into the sleep out account in March.
The account also received $11 in interest.
One of the reasons I’m really stoked about the Working for Families square up is because I was going to have to take the money for the course from the sleep out account.
Instead, I didn’t have to touch it and I could refund it some of the money I took out for the previous course.
Still not really progress on actually building the sleep out, and I think we are just going to wait until next summer with it completely.
Trip to Finland
The savings account for this trip sits at $4,471 at the moment, I think I nearly have the money to pay for my flight tickets and my daughters’ tickets!
Out of the $1,085, $480 went towards our trip to Finland. I’ve kind of accepted that our trip will be a lot shorter than I initially wanted with a lot (expensive) activities.
I also still need to check on if I could renew my passport in New Zealand, rather than travel to Finland, then maybe we could post-pone our trip a little bit and stay longer.
(New Zealand doesn’t have a Finnish embassy, which means that passports can’t be renewed here.)
Other
I emptied my other savings account to pay for the Skillshare subscription, but not sure where that money went, as I only needed half of it.
I still haven’t put any money on my other savings accounts, but I might start putting $5 a week in there. It will add up and if nothing else, I’ll use it to top up our travel fund a little bit.
I also put $35 out of the $1,085 aside for investing, but I’ll talk about that in the next section.
Finance check: Investing
I invested $100 in March, which I’m happy about (my goal was $50).
As mentioned above I put aside $35 for investing as well. I’ve been talking about wanting to change my investing strategy which might include changing the platform I use for investing. So I’m putting some money aside for it.
In March I also received about $19 in dividends. Not retiring yet, but every dividend makes me happy and excited!
Looking forward
I see that in my previous finance check my goal for March was to reign in my cafe spending. Well that didn’t work out!
I have increased the cafe budget a tiny bit, will see how it goes. I think I might be getting a bit over it, but just do it out of habit now.
I don’t have any other bigger expenses coming up in April except my monthly osteopath appointment ($105).
My income will also be a bit lower since I had to take the last week of March off for being sick, which just unfortunately means less pay. (I’m on a casual contract.)
I hope I will be able to keep saving, but I think I will drop my Sharesies contribution to $10 and put more money aside for investing later.
I will really need to watch any extra spending in April, and it would be really beneficial if I could stop spending so much money in the cafe, haha.
How did your March budget go? Let me know in the comments!
