Welcome to my March 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 March 2019 was $7,485.85, broken down as follows:

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

$333.07 from blog income consisting of affiliate marketing 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!).

$350 donated from hubs’ pay, for the purpose of making extra debt payments.

$452.53 Escrow refund from over payment.

$785.06 Expense reimbursements for work.

$26.53 Purchase return.

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 March in my saved stories on Instagram.

Any additional money that comes in during the month (in this month’s case, $333.07 in affiliate marketing income, $350 from hubs) goes straight to debt. I save my expense reimbursements in a car maintenance fund and use it for all maintenance including oil changes, alignments, new tires, etc.

DISCLAIMER: This month, I completely lost my mind. I spent with wild abandon. This is by no means a typical month for me, and I’m honestly a little embarrassed at how out of control I was. But, my goal with this blog is to be transparent. And to teach you that no one is perfect. We all mess up and make mistakes and go over budget and spend when we know we shouldn’t. Recognize it, accept it, and vow to do better next time.

Also, if you add it all up, you’ll notice I spent more than I actually brought home for the month of March. This is because I save for some things all year long (my HOA dues, birthdays, and medical expenses, for example).

Here’s how I spent the money in March:

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.

Home Owner’s Association Dues - $1,160. Due once a year.

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 - $2,727.63. This includes my $375.63 minimum payment plus $2,347 in extra payments. Our 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 pay $2,347 in extra payments is down below.

Gasoline - $221. 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. This month, I had multiple state-wide road trips across Texas, but a portion of these expenses will be reimbursed to me.

Tolls - $214. 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. Tolls were unusually high this month, due to all my road trips for work.

Auto - Miscellaneous. - $132. Includes some anti-freeze, windshield wiper fluid, an oil change, and I splurged on a professional car wash.

Birthdays - $423. $160 for my son’s birthday party venue, $235 for treating the entire family out to brunch at Rainforest Cafe, and some presents.

Clothing - $94. New shoes and some new shorts for my son, and a new shirt for me.

Hair/Beauty/Makeup - $25. A haircut for my son.

Entertainment - $468. Normally, we only spend $19 for Hulu and Netflix. Our entertainment spending this month was out of control—and probably higher than we spent ALL OF LAST YEAR on entertainment. We decided to splurge on theatre tickets for Aladdin which is coming to town this summer. This also includes a visit to the science museum for Spring Break and a movie. We NEVER go to the movies—and now I know why. It was almost $50!! Ridiculous. I know. I lost my mind. I told you.

Medical/Dental - $288. Two doctor’s visits and lots of labwork.

Groceries - $102. My husband handles the groceries out of his budget, but I picked up some things here and there this month out of my budget.

Eating Out - $115. 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. Since I traveled a lot this month, this includes meals on the road and road trip snacks, most of which will be reimbursed to me.

Save As You Go - $54. 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 54 times this month.

Miscellaneous - $147. These are charges for Walmart and Target that are on my card, and I honestly cannot remember what I bought. Eek, 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.

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 $900 on sinking funds, broken down as follows:

Birthdays/Other Gifts - $200. 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 - $200. 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 - $300. I usually put $100/payday into my medical/dental sinking fund. I added a little extra this month. I dipped in to it my medical fund this month (as I do almost every month) for two doctor’s visits and lots of labwork. It is so stress free knowing the money was there, specifically allocated for that purpose.

Spending Breakdown By Category and Percent

Here’s a breakdown by category and percent of my total monthly spending. Even after I went on a wild spending rampage this month, I still managed to save a significant portion of my income and debt was still the highest category! I’m pleased with that!! (This includes spending and sinking funds savings).

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 $2,727.00.

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 - March 1, 2019 = $1,047.00

For this extra payment, $651.92 came from the March 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?

• $73.03 was left over from my “cushion/buffer” category that I didn’t spend

• $121.95 came side hustling (blog income ad revenue)

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

• $4.37 leftover from my standard student loan payment (It’s $375.63, but I budgeted $380)

• $190 came from a refund for an over payment on our escrow account

• $4.05 leftover from my cell phone bill

Extra Payment - March 15, 2019 = $1,300.00.

For this extra payment, $816.46 came from my March 15 paycheck. But, where did the rest of this money come from?!

• $116.39 from my side hustle paydays (affiliate marketing income)

• $17.15 leftover from my last paycheck’s “cushion/buffer” category

• $350 donated from hubs’ pay

Total Debt Update

I began my debt free journey in January 2017 with $104,901 in student loan debt. I started this month (March 2019) with a student loan balance of $42,108. As of March 31, 2019, the balance is $39,542. With this month’s debt payments, I have paid 62% of my student loan.

And that’s a wrap! How about you?

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

• 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!

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