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Home > Rethinking Car Reg Handling, Shoes, Fractional Plates

Rethinking Car Reg Handling, Shoes, Fractional Plates

July 4th, 2015 at 10:22 pm

So yesterday I talked a bit about my car registration expense of $170 and how I was thinking I'd pay it in July, but not count it til August's budget. The more I thought about doing that, the more I didn't like it.

I knew the expense was coming up (couldn't remember exactly how much, but I knew it was probably a July expense.) So ... I could have set money aside for it. I think I didn't do that mainly because I was working off the idea of just "cash-flowing" these kinds of expenses. Which would work fine if it wasn't for the fact of my making a new goal/challenge of taking half of "extra" money for June and July and putting it towards a getaway.

When I thought about having to subtract $170 from my extra amount for the month, it made me not want to do it!

But the more I thought about "cheating" the budget, the more I didn't like that idea.

So I spent some time today reworking my budget. And putting the $170 for car registration in July's spending. Frown

I then figured out that even with taking that out of the equation, if I was really careful this month, I should still have at least $200 for my getaway. $102 for two nights lodging. $36 for park admission, $15 for living history farm - leaves about $50 for gas and food. Might still be doable. Plus maybe in August I can just budget an extra $30 or so to the Vacation category to give me a little leeway.

I also decided that maybe I should just go ahead and go back to setting aside monthly amounts for known, or possibly known expenses which don't occur regularly. So, I readjusted my July budget to reflect that. It drastically reduced my "extra" funds, but I think it probably is also a better reflection of reality.

My system worked for six months, but now some of those "irregular" expenses are coming up and like with the car registration, I almost feel resentful taking them out of my extra cashflow. If it's set aside already, then it won't (maybe) feel so painful/annoying.

---
Oh about the shoes! I was almost ready to bite the bullet and purchase the DSW shoes when I decided to give Amazon one more try. (I'd looked on there several months ago when first looking.) I found a pair that aren't *quite* the same, but very close. In the size I need. $37.98. I had $26.xx in my gift card balance (thanks Perk and Bing!) and $1.xx in Discover cashback. So my final cost was 11.78. They'll be here sometime this coming week. (Womens shoes also just happen to be in the 4SBs per dollar category right now.)

If they work, then I will return the other shoes. If not, then I will return them to Amazon and go back to DSW for that pair.

---
Doing Stronglifts the weight increments go up by 5 - 10 lbs a workout. That is a lot of increase for a woman. What is suggested to make the increase go a bit slower is to use fractional plates. I checked at the gym on Friday and they do not have them.

On Amazon they have a set for about $50. That's not too much, but of course I wanted to check first to see if there was a cheaper alternative. There is. Smile I bought 6 2" washers for a total of 11.67 (don't know shipping yet - but probably about $7.) They'll be shipped ground, so might be a week or two before I get them. Until they get here, I'll probably just stick with only using the barbell (the barbell by itself is 45lbs.)

---
People were shooting off fireworks til at least 1 a.m. last night. Then for whatever reason I woke up about 6 and could not go back to sleep. Got up, but was so tired I ended up skipping church and church picnic/ walking group. Still feeling really tired.

(eating the chocolate desert bread meant for the picnic probably didn't help my tiredness .... no more junk food for me this week!)

Posted in Frugal Single Life, Financial, Accountability, Budget, Year 39 | 6 Comments »

6 Responses to “Rethinking Car Reg Handling, Shoes, Fractional Plates”

  1. VS_ozgirl Says:
    July 4th, 2015 at 10:32 pm 1436049120
    1436049120

    I have a spreadsheet where every month at the end I create a new page for next month by copying the current month. Have been doing this since late 2012, each page is labelled the month and year (eg Jul15). The point is, I can see what the expenses of that month are a year ago, so I know roughly what the expenses will be for that month. Maybe try something like that so you avoid this situation? Ps great deal on the shoes!

  2. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    July 4th, 2015 at 10:41 pm 1436049706
    1436049706

    VS - I use YNAB, although not terribly faithfully (except since December .. longest stretch ever!) I decided in December to do an experiment where I only budgeted out the bare amounts for a limited number of categories that got spent every month for sure, plus car insurance. Everything else I put as cashflow. That worked up til this month when I actually *have* a large expense plus something else I really want to use the "extra" money for. So ... mostly going to go back to budgeting small monthly amounts for the irregular stuff now. Sigh.

    Thanks! I really hope the shoes work!

  3. AnotherReader Says:
    July 5th, 2015 at 12:15 am 1436055326
    1436055326

    By not including every expense in your budget, you are defeating the purpose of YNAB. The idea is to live on last month's income, with everything for the current month budgeted from that money. Every dollar has a job. By not following the rules, you are vulnerable to going over budget for forgotten expenses. And you leave a lot of cash for which you have not accounted that you end up spending on junk food and other "treats."

    Accounting for your expenditures at the end of the month instead of planning for them at the beginning means you will always have leakage and you will always be "surprised" at where the money goes. You don't control your money, your money, particularly your impulse spending, controls you.

  4. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    July 5th, 2015 at 12:27 am 1436056066
    1436056066

    AR - Big Grin
    I've been using YNAB since it was only a fancy spreadsheet. Smile Most of that time (when I actually kept up with it ...) I followed the rules to the letter. I'd had several stops and starts in using it the past few years, and in December decided to do kind of a hybrid experiment- partially YNAB methodology, partially methodology of don't spend it if you don't have to. That worked pretty well til May. I actually kept up with recording expenditures, etc. Then May happened. It was bad for spending. That's when I got the idea for the getaway challenge for June and July. Worked very well for June (cutting spending hugely from May!)

    Now though in July I'm seeing that my desire to NOT spend that extra money so I can have more for my getaway and my extra EF deposits is making me a bit resentful of the car registration expense. If I'd been putting away $15/month for it since last July, then it'd be a non-issue. Hence why I've decided to go back to a fully YNAB perspective/view budget. Here's hoping that 7 months of successfully keeping up with the budget/expenses will continue! (I think one of the reasons I stopped tracking before so many times is I'd get frustrated when so many things would come up that didn't work within my current allocations/categories. I'd try to manage it for awhile, and then just kind of ... let go. As long as my bills and CC's were being paid in full every month, with plenty left over ...)

  5. crazyliblady Says:
    July 5th, 2015 at 01:33 am 1436060029
    1436060029

    I also had the difficulty of how to handle irregular, but sometimes sizable expenses like car registration, property taxes, AAA membership, and escrow payments. The way I do it and not drive myself crazy is by estimating the total of the expense based on last year and adding a little bit in case it goes up. Then, I divide that amount up into the number of paychecks for a year (26 for me) so that something like my AAA membership of $130.00 is only $5.00 per payday. I can do $5.00 a payday and it keeps me from scrambling at the last minute to come up with the funds to cover the expense. Also, if I happen to get some kind of windfall, I might spread that out among the savings accounts as found money.

  6. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    July 5th, 2015 at 01:41 am 1436060519
    1436060519

    CLL - That's a good way to do it. Since I send my current checks to the next month's budget, I prefer just dividing those kinds of things by 12. When I get a paycheck I start allocating from the top (rent, tithe, car insurance, gym, etc.) and then fill in the rest on my second paycheck. (Month's with a 3rd check go to either categories I'm saving like mad in, and/or ones that don't get much funding the rest of the year. This year it'll be EF and probably Vacation (maybe electronics too ...) for my next two 3 paycheck months.)

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