Checking In With My Savings Plan: May Edition

In May, I received $9,463.57 in freelance payments. Here’s what I put in my sub-savings accounts:

Taxes got 22 percent, or $2,081.99.

Debt got 20 percent, or $1,892.71.

Savings got 10 percent, or $946.36.

That left $4,542.51 for my checking account, $1,500 of which went back into savings (to repay the $1,500 I took out of savings in April), leaving me with $3,042.51.

My savings account currently has a balance of $3,249.86, which is a little under two months of basic living expenses.

Here’s what happened to the $3K in my checking account:

• $995 went to rent
• $245.69 went to health insurance
• $192.44 went to bills
• $403.81 went to groceries
• $457.64 went to an extra debt payment, because I wanted to pay off the cost of the PNWA conference in July (which I had put on my credit card in April)
• $20 went to public transportation
• $64.28 went to business expenses
• $268.10 went to all discretionary expenses, including my haircut, the emergency shorts, streaming media, restaurants, and so on.

That’s how quickly you can spend $2,646.96 in cash, with only a handful of “fun” purchases. (Is a haircut “fun?” I guess I had fun getting it cut, so that counts.)

My end-of-month checking account balance was $699.81, which is a lot more than I usually have at the end of the month—and I still have another big check that’s scheduled to come in any day now.

I almost feel like I can breathe again, finances-wise.

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