accounts and envelopes and wallets OH MY

I love pay day. It's my chance to move the cash around into each lil spot I put it. Perhaps in a subconscious way it makes me feel wealthy for a moment.

I have four accounts at two banks. There is a primary chequing and savings at one bank and another chequing and savings and bank 2. Bank 1 is the main account. That's where the money comes in, the bills get paid, groceries are bought etc. There is precious little in the savings at that account. I pay for gas on CC to get the airmiles so I temporarily 'store' the gas portion of my budget there so it is intact when it comes to pay the CC. I do this with a couple other categories as well.

The second bank accounts I started about three years ago. I was having great trouble saving and when big bills would come in for the boys school fees, their sports fees, music fees etc, that money was never there and I'd go in the hole. I started this chequing account and made it a point to deposit a set amount into this accout the day after payday, each month. Then the money is there and kept quite separate from the others. The savings account at Bank 2 I just opened. I needed an account I don't regularily access so I could begin this much needed Emergency Savings Fund. My initial goal for that fund is $1000. I currently have $400 in it thanks to a bit of frugality last month. I don't anticipate things growing too quickly here as I am focusing on debt repayment.

All of these accounts are in my name only. I appreciate knowing that there won't be any surprises when I go to pay for something and find myself short of funds, as I was before when we shared an account. He has no objection to these accounts. We have had separate ones since Day 1.

I have a fifth account which is joint, but really his. I have access to it, I can go to the bank and deposit or withdraw, I can write cheques on it, but not a debit card. Since I don't contribute to it, I never use it.

Sometimes I wonder if my many accounts helps or hinders. I sure appreciate the 'hockey account' as I call it, though the boys are in more than that LOL

I have also taken out my own 'allowance' and have 4 weeks of envelopes ready to go for that.

It' s complicated but it seems to work for the most part.

Finally Pay Day

I can't believe a month has gone by already since I started with this 'beginning budget' and my plan to get my spending under control and get myself on the right track to get out of debt.

As the bills for the month start to come in I can see where the money went and how well I did.

This next month will be a big expense as my son and I have a trip to a city with food and hotel costs coming in close to $1500. My MC will take a hit but my goal is to have the balance of that paid off by end of October. The downfall of starting budget in July is that there isn't money set aside for this big of an expense this soon. The positive to starting in July is that I have a year to get ready for a similar expense for next summer and I can start to save.

My salary is actually over 10 months. I don't get paid for the summer 'off'. We have a lovely option with our workplace though that allows us to take smaller cheques in the main 10 months so that we can have a 'regular' cheque over July and August. I'd never be able to set aside the money to do so otherwise and then the bills would not get paid. I am so thankful for that 12 month option. The bonus of the July and Aug cheques is that the regular year long deductions are not taken off so these cheques are actually higher by about $500ish. This money I will put towards some of the city costs. That will definitely help.

I will get a pay raise for September but until the pay stub comes, it mostly is guesswork on how much my net pay will go up.

I always have a ton of enthusiasmfor budgetting on pay day as there is money and I can see the light. By the third week into the month with the main bills all paid off, there is little to do but try not to spend. Once a month paydays feels like forever til the next one.

coincidence

Right after I published the blog about Gas I went to CNN to see the primary article on gas prices :-)

It is rather scary to think that there are stations which charge different prices based on whether you pay in cash or credit card. This is news to me. We don't have such things in my lil prairie province. They may well in the larger centers in Canada. I don't know.

Now that my CC is paid off, I use it to pay for gas, pay it off in full at the end of the month, and collect air miles for the purchases. If this type of tiered system came here, I'd have to think about which is more beneficial....the miles or the money saved.

Seems like the more technology there is, the more complicated our choices become. Ironic

I also investigated the map which shows gas prices across the US. The highest was in the $4 range so I guess our prices up here of over $5 a US gallon are higher. That answers my question below then.

I've got gas :-)

My summer "let's drive to...." has been drastically cut this season. Before I head out anywhere I am constantly thinking of how much this will cost. In many ways I envy my children's friends who are a part of the 'we're driving to x lake' or 'we're heading out to the coast'. I feel bad for my kids because they don't get holidays like that but we can't even afford the gas to GET to such places, let alone stay there for a week or two. It really just doesn't seem fair sometimes.

Playing with my conversion chart, 1 US Gallon is 3.79 L. Currently our gas price here is $1.33 a L, which is down from $1.39 of about 10 days ago. That works out to $5.04/gallon. I'm not sure how that competes with any US readers out there and the price of their gas.

We live in a small twin community of a town and a small city. Total population of them both is about 25 000. Before school let out, I filled up my tank and did a loop..... from home over to drop the boys off at school, to my work, then picking them up and home again. That round trip cost $3, which isn't that bad, but often during the course of our day, we're doing similar trips over and back 2 or 3 times a day which means 14-21 of those a week. That comes to between $42 and $63 a week. That's warm weather driving. In the winter when the van needs to be warmed up in the AM and again after school before going somewhere, those costs are almost double.

I know there are people out there commuting to work and have a much higher gas bill than I.

I have budgeted $280 per month for gas. (I've actually been doing a gas budget for about a year). Anything not spent during these warmer months goes into a separate category saved aside for longer road trips or winter months. It's worked rather well except when you have several longer road trips recently which have eaten up the 'extra'.

It's made me think a lot about how much I drive, how much my car idles (say in Drive Thru), how to combine and preplan errands to cut down on the number of trips I make. That part has been a good thing. Paying the extra money per litre sure hasn't.

Tinkering

I can see already that when Sept 25 paycheck comes, I will have to have some tinkering in place for the budget. July and August's downtime will give me the chance to develop positive habits of record keeping of expenses and paperwork. It's giving me a good idea of how much I spend in each category. I have to accept that there will be a CC debt for end July/early Aug that will not get paid in full, so the Sept budget will reflect getting rid of that debt and then snowballing the rest.

I need to add a few things in.

I have not made a budget line for emergency savings.

I have not made a budget line for Christmas gifts.

I have not made a budget line for getting my hair permed/coloured.

I have not made a budget line for infrequent expenses like CAA, Costco, package policy on my van etc.

I have decided to reduce my weekly allowance and create a budget line for my perms/colouring. Since I don't use this line each month, I will have to tuck away what isn't spent and save it for when I do go.

Our contract shows an increase of 2% I believe for salary increase so offhand I'm not even sure what that means in dollars for my September cheque. My plan is to take whatever that raise is, and attach it to the debt to get rid of it faster.

We shall see what else changes. It shall be interesting.