April 2019 Monthly Spending Report and Debt Update

Welcome to my April Monthly Spending Report and Debt Update! In this post, I’m going to be sharing a recap of my monthly income and expenses, so you can see exactly how my budget and debt pay-off went this month!

Before we get started, let me share a quick recap of how we budget in our house.

My husband and I keep our money separate.

To begin, my husband and I keep our money in separate checking accounts.

Gasp. I know. Yes, we’ve been married 7 years already, and yes, I know Dave Ramsey says to combine finances. But, honestly, I’m just not at that point yet. He’s a spender and I’m a saver, and I think combining finances—with two people spending from the same pile of money—sounds like a disaster to manage. If combining finances works for you, fantastic! It’s just not what we’ve chosen to do in our home.

My husband and I split the bills.

My husband and I split the bills. I take the mortgage, home owner’s association dues, and property taxes. He takes everything else (car insurance, utilities, and groceries, and cash flowing college for his 20 year-old son). This works for us.

I share my half of the budget.

Hubs isn’t completely on board with sharing 100% of our income and spending plans with complete and total strangers on the internet. Thus, the budget recaps you’ll see here are my portion of the budget only. But, I will share real honest numbers with you, so hopefully you’ll get a feel for how a real budget works and functions.

OK, with all that out of the way, let’s get started!

Income

My total income for April 2019 was $18,081.09 (say whaaaaaat?), broken down as follows:

$5,538.66 from my regular paycheck from my regular job as a civil defense attorney.

$309.74 from blog income consisting of affiliate marketing and ad revenue for a home decor blog I started in 2017 and have basically completed abandoned. (If you’re interested in finding out how to earn money with affiliate income—you don’t need a blog!—see this post!). All of this money went to an extra debt payment I made in May.

$300 donated from hubs’ pay, for the purpose of making extra debt payments.

$903.90 from a work expense reimbursement. This goes straight to savings for car repairs, when they arise. (And I used all of this, this month, as you’ll see below).

$10,878.79 Overtime payout. My company keeps all our overtime and “banks” it. We can request a distribution any time we want. I recently cashed out $15K in overtime which netted me $10,878.79. $10K went to debt with $5K in April and $5K in May which will be on next month’s report. The rest went to a savings fund to replace our fence before the HOA kills us.

$150.00 from selling miscellaneous home decor items (i.e., clutter) from my home. This was included in an extra debt payment that I made on May 1, and will be in next month’s report.

Spending

Each month, I create a zero-based budget, allocating my income across all budget categories, until I’m left with 0. You can see my actual budget for April in my saved stories on Instagram.

Any additional money that comes in during the month usually goes straight to debt unless I have some expense I’m saving for. I save my expense reimbursements in a car maintenance fund and use it for all maintenance including oil changes, alignments, new tires, etc.

Here’s how I spent the money in April:

Mortgage - $1,770. We have a 30-year fixed rate mortgage (which I wish was a 15!). We ultimately plan to pay it off FAR sooner, once we tackle our non-mortgage debt and beef up our emergency fund.

Life Insurance - $49. I pay monthly for a 20-year level-term life insurance policy.

Cell Phone - $171. Yes, this is painful. And yes, it’s only one cell phone. I have AT&T and unlimited everything. Too nervous to make the switch to a budget cell phone provider, but maybe one day.

Student Loan - $7,486. This includes my $375.63 minimum payment plus $7,110.37 in extra payments. My student loan is the only debt we have, and we have an ambitious goal of paying it off in 2019. A further breakdown of how I was able to send $7,486 to student loans this month is down below.

Gasoline - $180. I drive, at a minimum, 50 miles to and from work each day, and sometimes I drive extra for work, attending hearings/mediations/depositions, etc. .

Tolls - $180. I have a 3-hour daily commute (an hour and a half each way—JUST to drive 25 miles in horrific Houston traffic). I happily pay extra to REDUCE my drive time down to ONLY three hours a day. This is ridiculous, I know. But, it’s the nature of the beast, and something I’ll gladly spend money on for now, even though it’s outrageously expensive.

Auto Repairs - $2,761. I had a lot of work done on my car (which is totally paid for since we bought it in cash years ago). We replaced the coolant reservoir and flushed the cooling system, repaired the inactive windshield wiper pumps, brake vacuum pump was leaking oil, and we replaced the front lower control arms which were cracked. Whew. But, I’m so glad we were able to get the repairs done by cash flowing from our car repair sinking fund and pulling from savings.

Hair/Beauty/Makeup - $95. A haircut for me and a professional eyebrow waxing (which I haven’t had done in years. I was looking like I had the eyebrows of an 80 year old grandpa).

Entertainment - $65. Normally, we only spend $19 for Hulu and Netflix. But, we splurged and saw End Game (it was epic—highly recommend!!) and also spent $14 to take my son to a trampoline park this month.

Medical/Dental - $60. Doctor’s bills and prescriptions.

Groceries - $0. My husband handles the groceries out of his budget.

Eating Out - $217. Always my biggest budget breaker, and even though I budget for eating out separately, I always end up using both my fun money and eating out money for eating out. This is probably the worst I’ve ever gone over budget. I just went crazy this month. We went to a school carnival and a food truck festival and I treated the family both times. Yikes. Gonna reel it in next month.

Save As You Go - $44. I bank with Wells Fargo, and I’m enrolled in a program that takes $1 from your checking account every time you use your debit card and puts it in your savings account. It’s an easy way to automate savings and helps build your savings up, over time, and you barely notice. I can’t believe I swiped my card 44 times this month. Eek.

Kid Activities - $48. I chaperoned a field trip this month and had to pay $20 for my ticket to the zoo. School carnival tickets also cost us $28.

Home Improvement - $48. This was for no fewer than 672 bags of mulch. :)

Subscriptions - $10. For Dropbox I use in connection with work.

Miscellaneous - $123. These are charges for Target that are on my card, and I honestly cannot remember what I bought. Eek. I said that last month, too. Maybe I should challenge myself to stay out of Target next month. I think some was for Easter goodies and new undies (ha!), but I don’t remember the rest! It must have been for things like toilet paper and shampoo, but trust me, it wasn’t for anything fun, or I’d remember. Must get better at recording my transactions when they occur because this is a pretty astronomical amount of money for things I can’t even remember. (I said that last month, too).

Savings

For more information on how I manage my sinking funds, and the 5 sinking funds I think every budget should have, see this post!

This month, we spent a total of $1,528 on sinking funds, broken down as follows:

Birthdays/Other Gifts - $100. My son gets invited to no fewer than 6,487 birthday parties a year, so this fund really helps when those unexpected gifts need to be purchased. I also used the money from this sinking fund to pay for son’s birthday party, which, this year, was at a Laser Tag/Arcade funplex.

Christmas - $200. Each payday, I add $100 to a Christmas sinking fund. By the end of the year, I have $2,400 to spend on Christmas!

HOA Dues - $150. I add each payday to an Homeowner’s Association Dues sinking fund, so I can pay the dues without stress or worry when they come due at the end of the year.

Medical/Dental - $200. I usually put $100/payday into my medical/dental sinking fund. It is so stress free knowing the money is there, specifically allocated for this purpose when medical and dental costs arise.

Miscellaneous Savings - $878. Into a sinking fund to replace the fence at our home.

Spending Breakdown By Category and Percent

Here’s a breakdown by category and percent of my total monthly spending. (This includes spending and sinking funds savings). I love that I managed to send 50% of what I spent to debt this month! Getting closer every month!!!

Debt Payments

In addition to my standard monthly payment of $375.63, I make an additional payment to my student loan (my only non-mortgage debt) on each payday. My extra payments this month totaled $7,110.37, for a total of $7,486 sent to debt this month!

Here, I break down those 2 extra payments, so you can see exactly how it’s done!

NOTE: When I budget, I usually round up, instead of budgeting the specific bill amount. Anything left over, I throw at the debt.

Extra Payment - April 1, 2019 = $1,152

For this extra payment, $933.64 came from the April 1 paycheck. (See my exact budget for this paycheck on Instagram, in my saved stories). But, where did the rest of the money come from?

• $216.68 came side hustling (blog income affiliate marketing)

• $1.68 came from my life insurance payment leftover (I budgeted $50, but the actual amount is only $48.32)

Extra Payment - April 15, 2019 = $5,658.37

For this extra payment, $658.37 came from my April 15 paycheck. But, where did the rest of this money come from?!

• $5,000 came from an overtime payout I received from work.

Total Debt Update

I began my debt free journey in January 2017 with $104,901 in student loan debt. I started this month (April 2019) with a student loan balance of $39,542. As of April 30, 2019, the balance is $32,226.20. With this month’s debt payments, I have paid 69% of my student loan.

And that’s a wrap! How about you?

• How did your budget and/or debt repayment go in April?

• Are you making progress on your 2019 financial goals?

• Do you have any questions about budgeting or paying off debt? Leave them in the comments below!

• Don’t forget to pin this article so your friends can see, too! Just click the image below!