January is officially over! Can't believe how fast it has flown by. Now is the time to take a look at your January spending and do some analyzing.
First off, let's look at how much we had to work with. For the month of January, I took home approximately $3,000 biweekly after taxes. For me, I did the 50-25-25 rule so 50% towards debt, 25% towards savings, and 25% towards fun. However, I was also paying off a lot of holiday debt this month (spending due to the holidays, ie,, presents, etc). My 50% towards debt doesn't include my credit cards; the 50% of my income towards debt goes straight towards paying off my loans. The 25% towards "fun" represents all of my credit card debt whether it's bills that I have to pay or clothes or eating out. I figure it's easier this way since I'm trying to pay off my student loans ASAP and I don't usually spend that much money on myself anyways. Here's how everything was came out.
Based on the 50-25-25 rule, I would've had $3,000 to go towards debt which is just going towards my loans so I ended up exceeding that by about $500 dollars. I was just a tad short of saving the "budgeted" amount. With that being said, that left me with about $1,000 to spend on "fun" stuff rather than the budgeted $1,500.
For January, I also didn't have to pay rent since we switch off paying rent so we don't have to write a billion checks. But that also means I should have saved enough rent money for February. Luckily I had enough money to cover rent for February without having to dig into my savings.
I would say I was pretty successful this month with keeping to my budget. However I do get a little anxious knowing that every single dollar is accounted for and that there is no "cushion". I feel like maybe I should subtract out a couple hundred dollars to account for emergencies/unexpected purchases. I like having a little cushion in my checking account just in case. It's a work in progress this budgeting thing so hopefully it will get easier!
Hope everyone stuck to their January budgets! Whatever goals you want to accomplish this year, I hope you're all on your way!
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