January 2017 FrugalMaster Results
The first month is well behind us and it is time to update how I did before March and spring come. With my 3 savings goals pretty much on autopilot it is more challenging to stay within the budget. By autopilot I mean I have separate savings accounts for those goals and money is automatically moved from them at the beginning of each month. What is left in my checking is pretty much what my monthly budget is. I do have some buffer in my checking to handle bills that come up quarterly or bi-annual. Overall for January I was right on target saving 40% of my income. This beats my goal mostly because of some extra income for the month. Every year we 'donate' money to our church Christmas raffle that benefits the social committee. For the first time since we joined the church we won and it was the big one on Christmas day. My wife was screaming so loud when they called us I thought something bad had happened. It was j...