July Finance Check: Where I Blew My Cafe Budget, Again
It’s that time again, July finance check! I have to say that I’m really proud how consistent I’ve been staying with these and tracking my spending, the accountability of doing these posts is working its magic!
How did the June budget go
So July finance check, what happened with my budget in the previous month?
Overall I feel like I didn’t spend too much money, but then I looked at my numbers and thought maybe there was a bit unnecessary spending there after all.
But, I did come under budget, mainly because I had again budgeted for my citizenship application, which I didn’t get around this month. Well, let’s be honest, which I didn’t prioritise this month and therefore put of doing it.
I happened to come across my passport the other day and realised it expires two months earlier than I thought, so I will need to get onto the citizenship in the hopes that I could maybe travel to Finland with a NZ passport rather than my nearly expiring Finnish one.
I got the news that my hours at work will be reducing, again. So now I’m down to just one working day a week.
I suppose it will be good for my studies and having more time for this blog and associated accounts, but it will be putting pressure on the budget.
Extra cost in June was my daughter’s birthday party, which I had budgeted $200 for, on top of the venue deposit of $125 I paid in May.
The party came to $201.01, which I’m happy about! This included rest of the venue cost ($125), party favours ($51.47) and cake ingredients ($24.54). My partner covered party food, utensils and some decorations.
We had pretty much a perfect amount of food, brought hardly any back home, but I did go a bit overboard on the party favours.
I finally cancelled my most expensive subscription which brought my subscriptions cost for the month down to $53.92, instead about $130.
Groceries were under too at $113.62 ($200 budgeted) (my partner pays for the bigger share) and power was $138.90 ($160 budgeted) (I cover the full power bill).
That’s it really for the items I came under budget though!
I went over with petrol for my car ($117.54 instead of $100) because I’ve had to drive to New Plymouth nearly weekly for different doctor’s appointments.
My cafe spending was outrageous to say the least at $149.10 (instead of wishfully budgeted $80). This was partly because I shouted my friend and her son a cafe visit one week. But it wouldn’t have brought the total down significantly.
Other spending came to $311.10 (budget was $300) and shopping to $99.98 (no budget, I had hoped to not do any “shopping”.)
Breakdown for the other spending is parking ($0.50), training plan from a PT ($127), strengths personality test ($35), treats from the dairy ($4.60), osteopath ($105) and doctor’s appointments ($39).
Shopping was $69.98 for two new handbags and $30 for a new board game for my daughter as a reward for being brave when getting immunised.
All in all I spent $2,637.54 in June, which was nicely under the anticipated $2,985.58. But that is only thanks to still not going through with my citizenship applications.
Finance check: Savings progress
June was another good month for saving, $600 saved all up. Finishing one $250 parcel helped (read what these parcels are here.)
Emergency fund
Out of the total saved, $20 went into my emergency fund.
The total is now $180.90 with an additional interest earned in June was $0.53.
Sleep out
Out of the total, I put $25 into the sleep out savings. It is still not a priority, but at least the balance is now growing!
There is about $5,070 in there currently, with about $9 earned in interest in June.
Trip to Finland
$550 of the total amount saved went towards saving for our trip to Finland.
The account now sits at about $6,060, which I’m super stoked about. The account also earned about $22 in interest in June.
Since this account is a 60 day notice account, I have put a reminder for myself to withdraw the money at the end of July. This means the funds will be available end of September in time to start looking at flights in October.
Once I make the request to withdraw I will divert the weekly additional savings to another account, same as with the interest that will be paid in the next two months as I wait for the funds to be released.
Other
I also put $5 into my other savings, which has a balance of a whopping $8!
As I have mentioned, saving for the trip to Finland is taking all the spare money available, and anything else has much lower priority.
Finance check: Investing
I invested $40 in June, with just my $10/week investment plan ticking along.
I also put another $15 away for later investing, the balance on that is now $160, so $40 to go before I will invest that.
I also received about $34 in dividends in June, which makes last month my highest paying dividend month of the year so far.
Total dividends are at about $61 for the year 2023.
For comparison, I received about $26 in dividends in June 2022, and $5 in June 2021.
It is still in my cards to streamline my investment strategy, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Finance check: Debt
Last month I was considering going into debt again to get an Apple Watch and upgrading my MacBook Air.
I decided to go for it and now have $3,193 in interest fee debt with Purple Visa.
While this purchase was interest free, it’s important to remember that there are other costs related to it as well, such as account establishment fee ($55 in this case) and ongoing management fees ($55 every year).
Do I regret the decision?
Yes and no.
I love my watch and I’m using it everyday, but it obviously wasn’t the bulk of the about $3,000.
I feel a bit guilty for getting the new laptop though. To the point where I haven’t even started using it yet!
But I will be setting it up this week, wiping my old laptop and putting it up for sale.
The idea was to use the sales proceeds as additional savings towards Finland, but I might need it to cover some upcoming expenses to manage this blog.
We’ll see what is leftover and put that towards our trip.
Anyway, the minimum payment on my Visa card is about $95/month, making it about $24/week, which should be manageable, even with my reduced work hours.
Looking forward
In July I’ll have my partner’s birthday to celebrate, and I really need to get onto my citizenship and I’ll need to figure out how I’ll manage my budget with less income.
I can see that I was swearing last month that I’ll spend less at the cafe in June. Well that didn’t happen! Should I make that promise again? Probably not.
But it is something I need to work on considering less income, plus a new weekly payment to cover debt.
My next osteopath appointment will actually be in August budget so there will be no osteopath expense in July, but there will be the second month’s payment for my personal trainer.
That has been going awesome by the way! I have been staying super consistent, and I’ve been loving the lady who does the plans for me. She listens and has made them super realistic (time wise) for me, which has helped me stay motivated.
I’m kind of tempted to continue beyond the first two months with her (we initially agreed on two months to get the habit going), but I don’t think I can realistically afford it with my lower hours.
But she has given me good tools to continue on my own, I will just need to stay well motivated for that!
What else, what else…
Not relating to my personal money matters, but budget related anyway: I have created a budget cheat sheet which will soon be available for FREE with a newsletter subscription!
What I’ve noticed as I’ve been budgeting and sharing it with you here, is that I’ve been often overlooking expenses which keep throwing budget out.
So, the cheat sheet is created to work as a reminder for you (and me) to remember to include all we need to in our budgets, to help avoid going over budget because of oversight!
I’m pretty excited about that, and the newsletter in general, so keep an eye out for that at the start of August.
Have you done a finance check for July? How did your budget go in June?
