What we spent and earned in March 2024

It’s no secret that I love budgeting! Sure, sometimes it’s annoying trying to reconcile accounts and it’s frustrating that saving takes so long. Progress can feel slow when you’re working to pay off big debt, but then feeling the peace that comes when you have control of your finances is worth all of the hassle.

Budgeting is key to being in control of your finances. Budgeting is not just something that’s recommended for people who are struggling financially. It’s the truly the key to reaching your money goals, and that’s true for all people.

In March, we made some sudden, exciting money moves that wouldn’t have been possible without diligent budgeting. I thought about a trip that we’ve been wanting to take for over a decade and how quickly our kids are growing up. I peeked at the flight prices and found them significantly less than when I had looked any time in the past. Within days I had the flights booked and a solid 2-week itinerary planned out.

It hasn’t always been like this.

When we started openly sharing our finances on 2013, we had six figures of student loan debt. Through hard work, sacrifices, and diligent budgeting, we paid off our debt less than three years later.

We didn’t stop budgeting when we became debt free.

Our frugal game was strong, so we continued tackling one financial goal after another.

If you have financial goals, you should budget. If you don’t have financial goals, you should make some! I bet it won’t be too hard to think of what those goals would be. It’s just a matter of vocalizing them and committing to start. Budgeting just for the sake of budgeting isn’t very fun, but budgeting to reach financial goals is super motivating!

Every month we share our family’s real budget with you in an effort to break the taboo about money and help you see how a budget can help you reach your financial goals.

Okay, let’s jump into our family’s March 2024 finances!

Spending in March

When we first understood the concept of living on last month’s income, it rocked our financial world in the best kind of way. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, this video will tell you all about living on last month’s income  and how life-changing it is. Or you can read this article on how you can get started.

At the beginning of each month, we start budgeting by first adding up the income we earned the month before. In March, we budget and spend what we earned in February. We knew on March 1st exactly how much money we had to work with during the month.  So on March 1st, we start the March budget by taking everything we earned in February and assigning it to our March budget categories.

We can’t see the future, so on the first of March, these dollar assignments were really just best guesses and goals. We’ve been doing this for years, so we have a lot of history we can rely on, but every month is different.  Our dollar assignments at the beginning of the month almost never stay exactly the same because our needs and priorities often change during a month.

It’s normal for our spending plan to change during the month. The important thing isn’t spending exactly how much we had guessed at the beginning of the month. It would be silly to let our March 1st guesses dictate what we can and can’t do all during the month. The important thing is to not spend more total in March than we earned in February.

If we need to spend more in one budget category than we had originally assigned, that money has to come from some other budget category. We revise the budget categories to meet our priorities during the month, but we can’t just add more money to all of them, because the total amount stays the same all month long. A changed budget is not a failed budget. A budget needs to be flexible in order to be successful!

Here’s our family’s final March spending for all of our budget categories.

Giving

Tithing – $1,775 We start out the month paying a 10% tithe on our income. Like all of our March spending, our tithing is calculated on what we earned in February. You can see February’s Budget Update here. We often get questions about this. You can read our thoughts on tithing here.

Fast Offering – $100 Each month we take one day to go without food and drink (fasting) and contribute to a program that helps people who need it.

Monthly Bills

Mortgage – $2,823  We have a 15-year mortgage on our 2200 sq ft house in Northern California. We’re so thankful to have locked in our mortgage interest rate at 2.375% when we refinanced in December of 2020 (all of the details and numbers are here.) We currently have about $175,000 remaining on our mortgage.

Electricity – $6 Last year we installed solar panels on our property, a $70,000 investment that we just finished paying for recently. For part of the year we produce more than we use, so we will also have some credit toward our bills in the winter when we won’t produce as much because of the shorter, cloudy days. Our electric bill is just the $6 unavoidable fee.

Car Insurance – $285 Our car insurance includes four cars right now (three are ours, one is for the Ukrainian family we are sponsoring).

Internet – $70 We have cable internet through Comcast. When we bought our home six years ago, we invested $5,000 into getting cable internet brought to our property. It has been well worth it every single day since then.

Water – $63 Our water bill comes every other month, so in February we set aside half of what we expect the bill to be, then paid the remainder in March.

Garbage- $49 Like the water bill, our trash pick-up bill comes every other month, so each month I set aside the money for half of the bill.

Cell Phones – $985 This was an expensive cell phone month for us. We bought anew phone for Mike and got a phone for our second oldest (both Pixel 7a). Now we pay for eight cell phones: five for our family, and three for the Ukrainian family that we sponsor.

Our phones are all through Visible. Visible is a Verizon subsidiary that offers no-contract plans with wifi calling, unlimited cell calls, and unlimited data on the Verizon network. We’ve been using them for years. You can’t beat paying just $25 per phone each month with unlimited data.

Music – $0 Our music teacher generously offered his time and talent to teach our 11-year-old Ukrainian girl free of charge. What a blessing!

Everyday Expenses

Food – $813  We eat at home almost exclusively; we don’t go out to eat or get takeout. We keep a well stocked pantry and freezer, as well as long term food storage. Our grocery spending is just for our family of 8 because the Ukrainian family receives income-based food assistance now.

If you need help getting your grocery spending under control, you can learn all about my strategies and method in my Grocery Budget Hero online course. Get $20 off with the coupon code STARTNOW.  That puts your total cost at $39. I promise you’ll earn that back many times as you build your grocery budget hero skills.

Fuel – $653 This is the first full month that the Ukrainian mom has had her car. I still drive her kids during the day while she is at English school, but she drives herself around and can take her kids to evening activities. Right now gas is $5.19/gallon at the cheapest spot.

Household Misc – $280  In addition to normal household necessities and subscriptions, we needed a new belt for our clothes dryer, phone cases for those new phones. I bought xanthan gum for a recipe, the original Roots series on Blu-ray, and Matt Sprouts and the Curse of the Ten Broken Toes (both my 11- and 8-year-old loved the book and can’t wait for the next one to come out).

Clothing – $186 – We bought two new pairs of running shoes and a few other clothing items.

Animals – $23 We were stocked up on animal food, but needed a few fish tank things.

Allowances – $130 We give our kids “practice money” as a weekly allowance.  You can read all about why we decided to pay our kids allowance that’s not directly tied to chores, as well as all the details of when and how much in this blog post.

Sports – $200 In March we paid for our daughter’s spring AAU basketball team.

Sinking Funds

For our normal budget categories above, we take out any funds that are still left at the end of the month and send them toward our big financial goal. For example, if we started the month with $600 in our groceries budget category, but only used $520 of that, the other $80 would go toward our current major financial goal. Focusing all these extra funds from each category into one goal helped us pay off our solar panels several years early.

In contrast to the regular budget categories described above that we zero out each month, we also put money into the categories below. These are our sinking funds. Our sinking funds are categories where we set aside money for periodic expenses each month and let it roll over and build up until we need it.

The amount in bold is the amount we added to the fund this month, followed by spending notes and the current balance of each fund.

To answer a question we often get, we do not have separate bank accounts for these funds. We had separate accounts many years ago when we first started budgeting but we learned that was overkill. Instead, all of the money sits in our checking account. Since we spend according to our budget category balances, not our checking account balance, we’re not worried about getting the money mixed up. We seriously never even look at our checking account balance unless we’re reconciling the account. We track our budget categories and spending in YNAB, a budgeting tool we absolutely adore. Yes, you can adore a budgeting tool. Don’t believe me? Try it out. If you have been using Mint or something similar to manage your finances, you’ll want to read about our switch to budgeting with YNAB.

Medical/Dental – $300 added. We spent $200 on an exam for contacts and a year’s worth of contacts at the optometrist’s office. I’m certain I can get them cheaper online now that I have the prescription. If you order contacts online, I would love to hear your recommendations. We also had some doctor/ER copays totaling $80.  Current category balance is $1,813. 

Car Maintenance – $2,004  added.  In March, we spent $3,006 on maintenance for one of our vans. We also got new wipers and a new seatbelt for the middle of the backseat. We have gotten away with not having a seatbelt there because we can still can buckle a cars seat in there with the latch system. Current category balance is $0.

Christmas – $200 added. I spent $13 on future Christmas gifts. Current category balance is $590.

Disability Insurance- $190 added We paid $2,217 for our annual premium, which leaves a little in this fund for next year. We will continue to set aside money each month for disability insurance so that when the annual premium is due we have the money ready. If Mike is unable to do his work as an attorney due to illness or injury, this disability insurance will replace about 60% of his current income. Since our income potential is our greatest financial asset right now, we want to have disability insurance to help us protect it. Current category balance is $90.

Life Insurance – $100 added. Our life insurance premiums are due each November, so we set aside a portion of the estimated total each month which will go toward next year’s premium. We had a $73 remaining after paying last year’s premiums. Current category balance is $473.

Birthdays & Gifts – $50 added. We spent $47 in March for gifts. I keep a gift stash at home which comes in handy when the kids go to parties.  Current category balance is $76. 

Car Registration & Smog – $50 added. We spent $0 in March. Current category balance is $102.

Family Fun Fund – $100 added. We spent $150 on a first payment for a summer youth camp for our two oldest. Current category balance is $38.

Home and Garden – $0 added. We spent $20 on Chip Drop. Current category balance is $80.

Big Trips – $1,285 added. Of the amount added, $420 was credit card bonuses and points and cash back from Rakuten. We originally made this sinking fund to save up for a fun family trip in 2025, but we are expanding it to include a trip we will take this summer, a trip that we’ve dreamed of taking for over a decade. I’ll share more about it soon. We spent $3,964 this month to book the flights (for 8!) and some of the accommodations. The original plan was to set aside $500 per month. Now we will need to average around $1,500 per month to make both our 2024 and 2025 adventures happen.  Current category balance is $63.

Investing

Kids’ 529s – $150 added. Investing just $25 per child per month for college isn’t much, but we are okay with that. Neither of us had much college savings when we went to college, but with scholarships, grants, loans, and jobs during school we were able to get our undergraduate degrees without debt. We may contribute more later, but right now we’re happy with small, consistent contributions.  I looked at the balances recently and was please to see that this small contribution that is barely noticeable in our monthly budget has added up to over $15,000! If you want to know more you can read about how we decided to start 529s for our kids.

IRA (Steph) – $583 added. With this same amount each month, I will reach my $7,000 IRA contribution for 2024.  Mike has about $1,300 each month deducted directly from his paycheck into the state pension fund for his retirement.

New Goal!

Since we finished paying for the remainder of our solar installation back in November, we have a new financial goal (in addition to our trip goal)!

We will need to replace one of our vehicles (our minivan that seats 8) soon, so saving for that will be our new goal! Originally we were set on another 8-passenger van, but since we have our 15-passenger van for when we all go together, we might get a car instead. The most we have ever spent on a vehicle is $5,500 (the 2007 Odyssey that we bought in 2019), so $20,000 sounds like a lot!

In March, we set aside $2,900 for our new van fund. We also spent $65 on a CarFax report for a car that turned out to be not nearly as awesome as we had hoped. With our total of $4,162, we are 20% of the way to our goal of $20,000.

Income Earned in March- $13,804

Above you can see everything we spent in March (that we had earned and received in February.) At the same time we were spending what we earned in February, we were also (of course) earning money during March. At the beginning of April, we set up our budget to allocate spending from our March income.

This concept of getting a month ahead, has made such a huge impact on our finances! It takes some work to get to the point where you are living on last month’s income, but the effort is completely worth it!

The income section below shows the money we earned in March, which we didn’t touch until April.

Attorney Income – $9,804 Mike works as an attorney for the state of California. This is his take-home pay after taxes, social security, his pension contribution, and health insurance premiums.

Rental Income – $0 For years we rented out a one-bedroom apartment on our property through Airbnb. We gave that up to take in a Ukrainian refugee family for a couple of years. We loved Airbnb and will likely go back to that in the future. If you’re thinking about renting out your space on Airbnb, check out Mike’s post about dealing with insurance for your Airbnb rental or our explanation of how we handle our Airbnb finances.

Law Firm- $0  Before working for the state, Mike did estate planning and business transactional work. Over the last few years he has had a steady stream of potential clients, most of whom he refers to other attorneys, but he still occasionally helps former clients. He doesn’t cut himself a paycheck each month, just a couple of times a year.

Blog – $4,000  I only pay myself a couple times a year now. My blogging income took a major hit when I put the blog on the back burner during Covid to start homeschooling my kids. It is slowly recovering as I put more effort into posting regularly and all of the things I do behind the scenes. Thankfully the income still covers my fixed blogging expenses (which are a lot more than most people would guess) and allows me to pay myself a few times a year.

At the beginning of May come back to see how we use this income to fund April’s budget.

How’s Your Budget Working for YOU!?

That was a lot of words and numbers! Congratulations for making it all the way through our March 2024 family budget update!

Now we would love to hear from you!

Any questions on what or why we spend what we do?

What are your current financial goals?

Do you find that your budget is helping you reach your goals, or is it not working like you wish it was?

Let’s chat in the comments!

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