Our June 2022 Budget

Hello friend! I do realize I am writing this blog post up a tad late. Sorry about that!

I hope to have these monthly budget with me posts up the week before the new month comes. *Fingers crossed for July!*

So, let’s just go right to it!

Income

I am anticipating my husband’s paycheck will remain the same as last month. I am sure our extra income will be much lower than May, but I don’t budget for this anyway.

Paycheck

To budget his “Paycheck” income, I go off of his previous month’s pay since we are not anticipating any changes.

Again, for this I take the gross pay and subtract taxes and FICA, leaving all deductions alone (for now).

Sometimes, you hear people call this after-tax salary. It’s not his take-home paycheck or net pay.

Extra Income

I don’t input any extra income during the budgeting process, only when I close out the month. I am not anticipating a need to get money from our “Buffer” fund. Hopefully that’s the case. 😅

Giving

Next, I budget our monthly giving.

Tithe

I will budget $846 for our tithing this month. We tithe 10 % of our income following a Biblical tithing principle we believe in. This basically goes to our church.

Offering

Then, we give a monthly offering to different ministries and charities we support and believe in. This usually stays the same because I have it autimatically set up to deduct from our account.

Other

The “Other” in our Giving category is usually for things like Go Fund Me that we may want to support, meal trains, and various loose offering collections.

Also, since we belong to a church and homeschool community there may be birthday parties (not for birthdays of our immediate family), weddings, funerals, baby showers that pop up every now and then. Sometimes, I can budget ahead for this, but sometimes I can’t.

Investments

Our investment goals were already set in the beginning of the year to make monthly contributions as easy and pain free as possible.

This year, our investment goals are simple: Max out my husband’s TSP (Thrift Savings Plan) and both of our ROTH IRAs.

Employer Sponsored Plan

My husband’s contribution to his TSP is automatically taken out of his paycheck. It’s $1,732 per month for the rest of the year.

I forgot to adjust our contribution rate in time for the first couple of months so our numbers are a little off and we won’t quite reach the max, but it’ll be pretty darn close so I am not worried about it.

IRA/ROTH IRA

I am budgeting $1,000 to our Roth accounts this month.

This will bring our total contribution to $5,998 so far this year. Half way to our goal of maxing out both of our Roth IRAs!

Other Investments

I will be putting $200 to the kids’ UTMA this month.

I do plan to explain what UTMA is and why we have it for our kids in the near future.

Savings

Our emergency fund is fully funded and I am sending $73 to our buffer fund. The $73 is basically what was leftover after I budgeted for all our expenses.

Our savings category differs from investments simply because this is money we are not going to invest. They sit in our HYSA (high yield savings account) and/or checking accounts.

This is money set aside for short-term (1-3 years) or emergency use. Think emergency funds, sinking funds, or buffer money.

Expense Budget

Now, let’s go over our expenses.

There’s a reason why I budget in this order. Typically, we tend to budget for expenses first and then the leftovers go to savings, right? At least that’s how I used to do it. Well, the thing is there’s usually not much leftover to save!

So, I budget in order of priority for our family. This may look different for you. You may want to prioritize any debt or even fixed expenses. It’s different for each family.

Anyway, I break our expense category into three: Fixed, variable, and discretionary.

Fixed Expense Budget

This is for regular monthly recurring bills or subscriptions. Typically the amount is fixed.

For us, this is our rent, insurances, internet, mobile plans, and utilities.

Our insurances (dental, vision, life, car, rental, etc.). For this month, it’s just our dental, vision, and life insurances since we pay for our car and rental insurance on an annual basis. We have Tricare Prime for our health insurance so there’s no premium or co-pays.

For our cell phones, we purchase prepaid annual plans from Mint Mobile (referral link), and it is time to renew my annual plan this month. The total including fees and taxes should be about $200 for 12 months from my estimation. This will come out to be $16.67/month for my cell phone plan.

Our housing has paused any utility charges since the pandemic started, which we do not take for granted!

Variable Expense Budget

Variable expenses are monthly expenses that occur but the amount can vary depending on the month. Things like groceries, general shopping, gas, etc.

Our grocery bill is averaging $500/month, it used to be $400/month but with inflation, I definitely have to budget higher. Also, I started to buy some meat (we were vegetarians for over 10 years) to try different protein sources, and this drives up our bill a little bit too.

For general shopping I am budgeting $200, I know I have to get some gym clothes for the kiddos.

I am budgeting a little higher for “Transportation” too since gas is more expensive and I know I have to drive the kids to sports camp every day for 2 weeks, and swim lessons once a week, so it’s more driving than usual.

For homeschool I am budgeting $100 for this month, I need to get a spelling curriculum and I may get a few other homeschool related books as well.

Service is for things like haircuts or any maintenence jobs that we pay others to do. I don’t anticipate any for this month.

For hubby’s work, we are not anticipating any expenses this month either.

Discretionary Expense Budget

Discretionary expenses are basically the extra or fun expenses.

I am budgeting $100 each to eating out and entertainment.

Travel will be budgeted at $700. *Since I am writing this post after our vacation, I can tell you that we did not go over, but came pretty close to our budget! 😄

Under “Gifts”, I am budgeting $50 to give to my dad for Father’s Day. My husband is only requesting a healthy meal so I don’t have to spend any extra here to get him a gift or anything.

Wrapping it Up!

Alright, that’s our June 2022 budget.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the “Total Remaining” balance at end of our discretionary expenses is $0.

I’ve allocated our income to a category until the end remaining balance is zero, making this a zero-based budget worksheet.

Do you do a zero-based budget for your family? Let me know in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you!