I know some people have serious reservations about setting up multiple savings accounts, which I totally get (and will talk more about in another post, trust me.) On the other hand, just leaving these savings in your chequing account is a recipe for spending them on something else. Pick a way to keep track of your savings for these expenses Once you’ve done that for every expense, you’ll have a ballpark idea of how much you need to put away each month between now and those expenses happening. That’s your new monthly savings goal, to make sure that expense is 100% covered by the time it happens. Take the estimated cost, and divide it by the number of months between right now and when that expense is going to show up in your spending. (Yo, you need to feed yourself, and as delicious as ramen noodles can be, don’t do it!)įor those expenses, you need a plan. Let’s talk about the bigger ones though – the ones that would 100% sink your budget and have you on a steady diet of ramen noodles if you had to also feed yourself that month.
#CK2 MONTHLY EXPENSES FULL#
Those ones, you have full permission to not worry about. Are some of them expenses you could handle within your regular monthly budget, if you just adjusted a few things? Maybe it’s a wedding gift, but the wedding is in town, so your expenses are minimal and you can totally swing it, no extra savings required. We’re all about not sinking budgets here, right? Right.īut first things first: take a look at your planned expenses. I remember saving up for running gear when I was a new grad, because a $200 pair of running shoes would have absolutely sunk my monthly budget. Now that you have a ballpark number for each of your monthly expenses, you can work on a savings plan to tackle them, without totally destroying your monthly budget. If it’s something you haven’t done before, like a vacation or a new pet’s routine vet bill, you can still make an educated guess! Google how much other people have spent on similar things, and if it’s something that involves multiple expenses (I’m looking at you, vacation) spend a bit of time planning how much you’ll spend on each part of it. If you’ve bought this thing before, it’ll be an easy estimate – plan for what you spent last time, and you should be within the right ballpark. Once you have that list, you can estimate how much each thing is going to cost you. Dependent’s expenses (sure, I mean my expensive dog, but kids count too I guess)įor me, I came up with 10 big expenses, tied to 6 months in the year (there was a bit of overlap making for some spendy months, clearly.) If you want an easy way to map yours out, make sure to grab the worksheet and outline your year of expenses! Estimate the costs.Seasonal expenses (sports, team memberships, etc.).Annual or quarterly payments (insurance, etc.).These are the things you know – roughly – are going to happen, and when. I didn’t go high-tech on this part: I literally wrote out the months of the year and put notes about big upcoming expenses beside each month. The nice thing, though, is that I’ve had a plan in place to cover these expenses all year – and there are some simple steps you can take to make sure these big one-time expenses are stress-free for you, too. I’ve also got a certain dog’s annual insurance payment coming up in September, which brings us to October before the non-monthly expenses really die down. I know my next few months are going to be super-spendy, because I’ve planned to knock out some major non-monthly expenses over the summer, from my annual hosting costs to a big vacation to out west for fun, meetups with other amazing bloggers and a family wedding. We’re talking everything from a big vacation to an annual insurance payment to Christmas gifts (because egad, the holiday spending struggle is real.) How can I be so sure, months ahead of time, that I’m not going to hit my savings goals for most of the next few months?Ĭall them planned spending, irregular expenses, whatever you want to call them, at the end of the day they’re big purchases that don’t happen every month. OK, I still have hope for July, but that’s a big maybe. I have a confession to make: I’m not going to save half of my income this month.
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