September Finance Check: Where I Go Significantly Over Budget

Time for a September finance check, my monthly tradition. As always, writing these posts keep me nice an accountable to myself and to my own spending.

How did the August budget go

In my September finance check I reflect on my August budget, did I stick to it, or did I go over board.

My regular hours as a reliever at the daycare ended in August and I had my last pay.

At the same time my partner’s income increased which meant that my Working for Families tax credit were cut as well.

So I’ve been feeling like I’m in a bit of a funk financially! It’s the first time I’m not working, if you don’t count parental leave, but even during that time I was getting paid.

This means I’ve amped up my job search. There’s only 6 weeks of lectures left before exams so I’m hoping to get something lined up for as soon as the semester ends.

So far I’ve applied for 4 jobs in the finance field, out of those 3 I’ve had no luck with and I’m waiting to hear about the 4th one at the time of writing this.

Anyway, budget!

All in all I came under budget, because I again didn’t sort out my citizenship application! I had also budgeted $150 towards my youngest’s birthday but due to not having much money, my partner covered it fully.

Couple of categories where I went over budget were power ($181.17 instead of $160) and cafe spending ($167 instead of $100). Power was over because we only have our meter read every few months and if we are not home they won’t try again. So they had gone with estimates for about 3 months and had it a bit off.

Cafe, well, I have clearly no self control!

In August I had also budgeted some money towards new clothes ($200) but only spent about $140.

There was a couple of birthdays in August, on top of my daughter’s and I had budgeted $100 for all the presents. I ended up only spending $71.75 as two birthdays was pushed to September budget.

My girls were unexpectedly invited to another birthday party though, so it all worked out in the end so I came under budget!

Now other spending was only budgeted to be $125 to cover my Purple Visa payments to I ended up spending $270 instead. This was because I continued with my personal trainer for one more month (for $127) and spent $18 on wet wipes at The Warehouse (I didn’t really count that purely shopping haha!).

I did do some shopping though, unbudgeted unlike the clothes I bought. I spent $292.89. Ups. I bought two planners for 2024 for $280.91 (yup, a lot! Well, a surprisingly large portion was shipping cost) and then spent $11.98 on couple of silly little toys for my girls (we were buying a birthday present and I just gave in to the demands).

In the end I spent less than I expected ($3,412.75) but I also earned less than I expected and was in quite a budget deficit this month ($749.69 in deficit!).

Finance check: Savings progress

I didn’t quite reach my savings target this month, but still saved $295.

Emergency fund

Out of the total saved I put $10 into my emergency fund.

Currently I have $217.25 and the account earned $0.74 in interest.

My emergency fund sits in a Sharesies saving account with a 4.6% interest rate.

Sleep out

I didn’t put any money into the sleep out savings account in August.

My partner has been putting money in there though so the balance has been going up to about $5,652.

In August the account also earned about $12 in interest.

My partner has kept clearing the area where the sleep out will eventually go so that it will be ready once we have the money to start!

Trip to Finland

The $285 I saved in August went toward our trip to Finland.

We are getting close to needing to buy the flight tickets. It’s getting exciting!

I have now about $7,888 put aside for the trip and the account earned about $31 in interest.

Another month and the funds that have been on a 60 day notice saver account will be released and I’ll be able to buy the flight tickets.

Me not having as much income has slowed down my ability to save towards the trip, but hopefully I will still reach my target of $10,000!

Other

I still have just under $400 on my other saving account left from the tax credits. That account also earned about $2 in interest.

Finance check: Investing

I invested $30 this month been. Not a lot but still something!

I also got $1.15 paid in dividends. A lot less compared to last month, but that’s the way it is with dividends.

I have finally had a look at my portfolio as a whole to see how it is currently structured. I still need to track and evaluate couple of things but I have made a spreadsheet of my holdings in August and asset allocation.

It’s pretty aggressive haha!

The value of my whole portfolio (including KiwiSaver) is about $16,200 which I’m really happy about!

There are a few duds in my portfolio, I mean one of my investments has lost about 89% of the value! Another one is closing on 80% of value lost. But it is only a couple my investments and to be honest, I’m likely to keep holding on to them (the other pays pretty decent dividends).

I’m currently refining my financial goals to better align my investing with them. You can read how I’m making my life goals into financial goals here.

Finance check: Debt

I paid $125 towards my Purple Visa debt and have about $2,968 left owing.

It’s good that the card can only be used for interest free purchases in couple places, otherwise I might have used it again!

Looking forward

In the second week of September our mortgage will go up to $300/week instead of $200/week with the change of interest rate.

My partner is currently working on a big development project so is getting steady hours with a higher charge-out rate so he’s currently covering pretty much all of our bills by putting the money into my account for me to manage.

As mentioned above I’m looking for work but it won’t matter for the budget for a few months since I wouldn’t want to start until the semester finishes at the end of October.

We still have a few birthday parties to attend in September, at least two that I know of so far. I also have a hair cut but I think I will be pushing my osteopath appointment to the next month.

I will also need to start putting money aside for a dentist appointment, just for a check up and to get ahead of anything that might pop up.

I learned the hard way of not going to the dentist for a few years, and when I finally did they found 4 teeth in need of fillings! That ended up costing heaps to get sorted.

I’m trying to keep my spending to a minimum this coming month so I can actually save something as well!

I have a few bigger items to sell too, like my old laptop, a double pram and a good quality baby carrier so I need to get onto that to make a little bit of extra money. I also need to sell our high chair as my youngest hasn’t used it in ages and maybe see if I can find anything else to sell.

There’s heaps of things that I’m not even thinking of selling, just maybe giving them away to get rid of them.

Have you done a finance check this September?