Budget Buster

It's mid-January and winter has been come and go, the weather this year is weird...

The other day in the cold, my car wouldn't start. It was determined that the battery was dead, so it had to be replaced. If you've been reading along, you know that I budgeted a small amount each month for car repairs. This was meant to be saved up to have when a repair was needed.

I have only been following this new plan since January 1st, which means my car repair fund does NOT have enough in in to cover the battery. But because I designed my budget solely around the income from my main job, any other income was to go toward my EF (emergency fund). This month, some of the money from my second job will be used to pay for the car battery, thus savings will not be increasing as quickly this month as I had hoped.

The good news is, I didn't have to turn to credit to pay this unexpected expense. If this expense had come up before my budget plan was in place, I would've paid it out of checking and later had to put groceries on the credit card to be able to keep my accounts in the green. I would have probably already spent money on frivolous things rather than having extra in my account for savings or emergencies.

While this makes me over budget this month, I would still say this month is successful overall and I am thankful for my budget! It did just what it's supposed to, it provided peace of mind and kept me from stressing about how to pay for things.

On another note: I hugely underestimated my year end bonus amount. I should be able to accomplish more than I thought with this extra money and I'm very excited to start seeing my progress bars (on the side of the blog) change!