May 2015 Budget

May was the best month so far this year.  Allot has changed since then thus why my post is very late in coming out.  I will save that info for another post so for now let's take a quick look at where I saved and where the consumerist in me won.

Income

Twice a year is the glorious triple paycheck month.  This was the first triple of the year and thus why my savings was the highest so far this year.  Just looking at the budget I was able to squeak under the limit by $24.  Boy that was a close one.

Needs  K

Category	Comments	Under K or Over J
Auto	Nothing out of the ordinary except for my yearly car registration fee.	K
Home/Personal Expenses		J
Utilities	Water bill time!!  Over as usually when this comes around each quarter.  I am trying to convince my wife to switch to a front loading washer.  She will be able to do more laundry and I will save water.  She is concerned the clothes will not be as clean from the lack of water.  Your thoughts?	J
Loans	2 Mortgage loans and 1 kid in braces.  Other than that debt free.	Fixed
Food	Food was a little over $700 this month.  Still way under my budget for the year.  I will most likely update that soon when I have a few minutes.	K

Wants J

We did go over for the month.  I blame it on me being a dad and husband.  Gifts and treating my wife to a break busted the bank this month.

Category	Comments
Dining Out	We only ate out twice the whole month.  We were able to do it for about $45 per outing for the whole family.  Not bad at all.
Gardening	Flowers and mulch let to a bit of overspending.  Don't really need it but it does make my house look better.  Most of the houses in my neighborhood do mulch but have no flowers.  I find the monotonous green almost as bad as the winter months.  Why not add some color for a few dollars.
Gifts	$119 over budget.  My son's birthday present is a yearly subscription to an online game.  That plus a day out on mother's day bumped us over in the wants category for the month.

Savings & Summary

Over all I am very happy with the 36% savings rate for the month.  Couldn't have done it without that extra paycheck.  With another kid on the way I don't see my costs going down.  Time for my yearly check on insurance rates and maybe something else needs to change.  One note about my savings rate graph.  2013 was pretty negative for May mainly because I put a new roof on that year.  Other than that May is usually a good month for DFG.

Happy savings,
DFG