What Our Budget REALLY Looks Like

If you’ve been following along our journey, you know that I created our super simple budget back in October. This is the first time I’ve made a budget that actually works, and it’s because I create a new budget for every month. I am happy to announce that I don’t hate budgets anymore! It’s really important to me to check in every month and see where we are, and if we’re headed in the direction of our goals.

When I wrote my super simple budget post, I wrote what percentages each category should take up in your budget. I was curious to see how we were doing compared to the projections I had made. In the 7 months that we have been budgeting there has only been one month where we have gone over budget, and that was mostly because one month we had only 2 pay checks but 3 mortgage payments.

My projected percentages:

Housing 25-35%
Transportation 10-15%
Utilities 5-10%
Food 5-15%
Debt 0-15%
Saving 10-15%
All else 25%

So what are our actual percentages? I took an average of our income and an average of what we have spent over the last 7 months.

Housing 28%
Transportation 10%
Utilities 11%
Food 6%
Debt 25%
Saving 5%
All else 15%

I think we’re doing pretty well! We have been paying off the debt as aggressively as we can so we are not saving as much as I would like right now. We will increase our saving after the debt is gone, so I am okay with it. I can’t wait to have 25% of our income back after the debt is gone! I have already been daydreaming about what we will do with that money (after putting lots of it toward savings of course!). When will our debt be paid off?

We have paid off 40% of our debt in the last 7 months and I’m SO excited by this! I really wish we had started sooner. Our original goal was September 30^th 2019. If we continue on the path of paying 25% of our budget onto the debt, our debt will be gone in 11 months! That’s 6 months earlier than the date we originally wanted!

via GIPHY

All this would not be possible without budgeting! Our budget is our roadmap to help us get to where we want to go. If you’re just getting started budgeting I would recommend getting my budget worksheet to use every month. It’s really helped me keep on track!

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