June Finance Check: Where My Spending Got A Bit Out Of Control
Time for my June finance check! I like my new spending tracker layout, it makes it a lot less work to get monthly totals in the end (as the adding up is done bit by bit through the weeks).
How did the May budget go
These posts have truly given me some better accountability when it comes to my spending and they help me understand it better too!
So here we go, June finance check from a budget perspective!
I feel like I spent a lot of money this month. And not really on the things that I had expected, but on some a bit impulsive things.
I had anticipated that I would be applying for my New Zealand citizenship (costing about $420) but I didn’t get around to it. So, this will be carried forward to next budget (and I really really should get it done!).
I managed to work a bit more hours than I expected which increased the income I had expected a bit, which probably didn’t help when it came to my spending (but I’m fairly certain I saved more of it than I spent).
My partner also had a few invoices paid to him so what he paid me was a bit more than I thought it would be. (He pays me his share of household bills like mortgage, rates, power, internet and insurances. He also gives me a little bit on top of these when he can to fuel my iced mocha and donut addiction, haha.)
There was no big sudden expenses this month, and even my daughter’s birthday party I had budgeted for didn’t end up happening (I dropped a ball and the party won’t be till June).
I didn’t really massively come under in any budget categories, just groceries with $130.23 spent rather than budgeted $200. And I spent $125 on my daughter’s up-coming birthday party (venue deposit) instead of $250. Although, the party is going to be over the $250 considering $250 only covers our venue booking and won’t include food, decorations or party favours.
I went over budget in couple of categories in May, one being the subscriptions ($130.86 instead of budgeted $60). This was because I had planned to end one subscription but didn’t get around to it.
On top of the subscriptions I went over in takeaways this month ($56.20 instead of $30), because I bought lunch out twice and my cafe spending was out of hand ($158 instead of $60).
My other spending and shopping was out of hand this month too. Shopping amounted to $339.37 in May AND my other spending ended up being $301.89.
The biggest purchase on the shopping front was a new Kathmandu jacket that I bought from sales for $150. I also spent $112.09 at the Warehouse, but I have fully forgotten what most of it went to! There was some pens I believe, envelopes, cardboard for invitations, hair clips and such for myself and my daughter, and I’m sure there was something else as well, just can’t remember what it went to! I need to make some notes in my phone, or keep the receipts from now on!
I also spent $53.78 at the Paperplus on gifts for my daughter and my friend’s daughter and $23.50 at a $2 dollar shop to get a lockable little safe for my daughter as well (we are weaning her off of her dummy).
In the other spending there was my usual monthly osteopath ($105) and hair dresser appointment ($55). I also spent $21.50 on treats for the teachers at the daycare for my daughter’s birthday and $36.89 at the Warehouse Stationery for my new spending tracker and printing invitations to the party.
$57.30 went at pharmacy this month (although I got $17.50 back after a refund), which was some cough syrup and hair ties for my daughters and a prescription for me. We also went to the pools ($10.50), I paid for some postage ($11.40) to send a birthday gift to my friend’s daughter and had to do some printing as a trustee for a charity.
All in all I spent $3,606.93 in May, which actually was only a little bit more than anticipated because I had budgeted for the citizenship but didn’t actually get there.
Finance check: Savings progress
May was a great month for savings and I managed to save $660 all up! This was thanks to higher than anticipated income.
Emergency fund
My emergency fund is at $165.37 now, out of the total saved I put $15 into my emergency fund and also received $0.37 in interest.
Yes, I finally moved it from my non-interest earning BNZ account into a new Sharesies savings account! I received an email from Sharesies asking if I’d like to open one of their new savings accounts and I thought why not!
It has a good interest rate (4.60%) and this way my emergency fund is finally out of sight so I won’t dip into it like I used to.
Sleep out
Our sleep out account sits at $4,970.
Yes, it has dropped again. This time my partner wanted some money for car parts. I didn’t put anything into this account in May. My partner put some and it also earned about $11 in interest. But we also incurred a transaction fee of $3.
Neither of us is really prioritising this account at the moment.
Trip to Finland
As usual, most of the $660 went towards our trip to Finland (it is my top priority after all!).
It sits at about $5,487 now (yay!) and $565 of the total savings went in here.
The account also earned nearly $20 in interest ($19.85)!
This savings goal is starting to feel really achievable, especially since the trip has been pushed back by couple months.
Also, my mum has said she will chip in to cover flight tickets and so has my grandparents, which takes a lot of stress off of my shoulders!
Since this money is on a notice account I need to give 60 days notice to withdraw the funds. I have now put a reminder for myself to request a withdraw at the end of July to receive the funds at the end of September.
My plan is to visit a travel agent in October and have the flight tickets bought by the end of the month.
I know I could just DIY the flight tickets and if it was me alone I would. But I’m traveling with two little kids and my partner who has never left the country so I want to make the travel as smooth as possible for us.
This will probably include a longer layover somewhere with a hotel stay to regroup and rest. So, rather than trying to organise this, I will be getting a travel agent’s help to do that.
Ideally I would want to fly Air New Zealand to Tokyo, stay overnight and then fly Finnair to Helsinki, but I have a feeling that this route would be out of our price range. It would just be awesome because each flight is only 9-10h each!
But I think with the help of my mum and grandparents I might be able to organise something reasonable without spending all the savings on flight tickets alone
Other
The rest of the $660 ($80) went into my general savings account to cover some upcoming birthday party expenses.
After taking out some of it to cover the deposit for my daughter’s birthday party there is another about $50 to go towards the party on top of what I’ll spend from June’s income.
Finance check: Investing
I invested $50 in May, just having my weekly $10 plan ticking along.
I also put $60 aside for later investing, and that is at $145 now.
I have also been looking at opening an investment account in Finland. That would give me better access to Finnish and other Scandinavian plus European shares.
My long term goal is to own short-term rental properties in Finland to have access to somewhere to stay when I want to go over there.
And I figured opening a share portfolio in euros in Finland could be a great way to save for a deposit, separate from all my other money and already in euros.
I will start investing from any birthday/Christmas gift moneys I receive from my family to avoid any currency conversion fees.
Eventually I will look into setting up a trust over there, or possibly a company that does own the properties, and listing family members as beneficiaries as well. I have a few siblings and the potential to have a couple of nieces and nephews.
One thing I do worry is my mum’s financial situation as she gets older. She is married to my step-dad, but I know that he has used money to control mum in the past (not sure if it is different now) so I want to make sure that my mum will have access to some form of wealth no matter what happens!
This could be a place where she can live and/or benefit from an income producing property/share portfolio that is already in Finland, rather than me transferring money from New Zealand.
Anyway, lots of big goals to work towards! I can’t wait to have a full time job haha!
Looking forward
I usually start these posts by reading the previous month’s finance check. (You can find it here.)
I love how I said last month how I was “over” my iced coffees: cue I spend more than ever!
Also that “I will try to not buy unnecessary things”. Shopping and other spending at about $600. Ups.
Anyway, in June I will hopefully get my butt in the gear and apply for my NZ citizenship, so that will be $420 thank you very much!
My daughter’s birthday party will cost a further maybe $200 (at least).
I will REALLY REALLY try to cut back on the iced drinks, I swear! 3 days a week maybe? Rather than 5-6. And maybe just one donut a week? That’s doable I’m sure.
My new spending tracker has a monthly tally on the tracking page so hopefully calculating the totals every week will wake me up to my spending a bit better.
I will also do my best to keep receipts to actually remember where I spent my money.
In June I will have my usual osteopath appointment and I’ll be signing up to get my exercising happening as well. I’ve decided to work with a lady for 2 months to get an exercise habit going (I need accountability). This will be $127 for each month starting June.
What else…
Well, I’m currently applying for a Purple Visa to access 30 months interest free on certain Apple products when bought from Noel Leeming. I want to upgrade my laptop and get an Apple Watch. This would end up being payments of $30/week for the 30 months (but I would be ramping the payments up once we come back from Finland).
Maybe a bit unnecessary but I’ve been thinking about doing both for a long time. I bought my laptop in 2018 and while there is nothing wrong with it, the amount of storage it has is frustratingly low. I’m hoping to sell it and boost my Finland savings.
But we’ll see if my credit application is accepted, considering I’m on lower income now with only a part time job plus two dependants.
Last but not least, I’ll be changing how I write up my budget starting June.
Until now I had added my sinking funds as a monthly expense, but I realised that a lot of the expenses that I did pay came from there. So technically I was accounting for them twice.
For example, I put money aside into sinking funds every week for my osteopath and petrol. I record this weekly amount as an expense. Then, when I actually pay for the osteopath and petrol, I record it again as an expense, even thought he money came out of sinking funds and had already been marked as an expense.
I realised I wasn’t doing this to my bills account even thought they function the same way.
So I will change that!
That’s it for the June finance check. How did your May budget do?
