Share Your Successes (and Failures)

Photo credit: Carol VanHook, CC BY 2.0.

It’s time for our monthly successes/failures check-in. As I often ask my Doing Money interviewees: what did you do well financially, and what did you wish you could have done better?

Here’s one way I failed last month — when I calculated my summer budget, I included the paychecks I planned to receive by the end of June but forgot to pull out the money I needed to put towards taxes/savings/investments. This means that I’m beginning July with $1,966.65 in checking, not $2,500 — which means I need to put a little over $1K of my forthcoming earnings towards refilling my $3K checking account buffer, not $500.

So… I’ll have about $400 in unallocated income per month this summer, not $600.

Whoops.

(Remember: unallocated =/ discretionary. I included all of my current discretionary expenses, from Netflix to the Travelers’ Rest music festival, in the budget. That $400 goes towards unplanned purchases, like the donut I bought on Sunday. So… I just have to make fewer of those.)

What about you?

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