Cash Husband writes:

There comes a point in any grand plan when circumstances conspire to deliver a seemingly karmic smackdown.

June is that point for our budget. So far in June, we’ve racked up the following irregular expenses:

$588 car repair (with a note about potential future repairs totaling $2,500)
$300 window unit air conditioner
$275 pre-school summer session
$435 annual professional writer’s insurance
$150 monthly housecleaning (the previous one retired; new service is great but more expensive)

Total: $1,748

All of which neatly erases about six month’s worth of proposed savings and debt paydown.

We will keep at it, but sometimes the game feels rigged.

(Editor’s/wife’s note: We were budgeting $475/month for this category. But we forgot a few items — a big one being car repairs. And, our budget being pretty new, we didn’t have enough in the kitty to cover so many of these expenses hitting at once. We have now bumped up this category to $600/month.

Here’s another post about budgeting for irregular expenses from Think Your Way to Wealth, and a handy tool called NeoBudget dedicated to just this problem. As advocated by many, we’re looking into opening a separate savings account dedicated just to irregular expenses — otherwise known as “life.”)

Related posts:

1. Creating a Budget for Irregular Expenses It looks like we’ve finally whittled our monthly expenses down...
2. Budget Buzz: Getting Over ‘I Don’t Know’ Budgeting gets a bad rap as a giant drag. If...
3. Budget 2010: Progress on the Debt Front When I last wrote about our two- or three-year plan...

Tags:   Budgeting · irregular expenses3 Comments