Y’all, I screwed up this month.  It’s only like half my fault, though.  My paycheck is no longer being direct deposited since I switched payroll systems a few months ago.  (How patient am I supposed to be with this?  I submitted the paperwork for the new direct deposit in August.)  So now I grab my paycheck on the last workday of the month and use my smartphone to deposit it to our Ally checking account.  But it can take several days for the money to show up in our account and become available.  The mistake that I made was that I paid off our credit cards from October in the first couple days of November (using October’s money, of course) and then on November 5 we have all of our auto-transfers to our targeted savings accounts.  I thought my paycheck had already been deposited so that was all good, but I guess I was wrong, and the combo of rent, our early-month bills, and the targeted savings transfers were more than Kyle’s paycheck could absorb, and I had rid our checking account of the cushion provided by the money that was slated to go to the credit cards.  Anyway, we overdrafted.  Ally did that annoying thing where when you have a check being deposited on the same day that some debits are coming out, they counted the debits as coming out before my paycheck going in and hit you with the overdraft.  I thought you were better than that, Ally!  Anyway, once I saw the $9 overdraft fee, I chatted with Ally and got the fee waived.  I still honestly don’t know how I made that mistake because I did check before I paid off the credit cards that my paycheck was available – I’m 50% blaming me, 25% blaming Ally, and 25% blaming my university.  But I’m glad Ally waived the fee.

The Everyday Budget

Top-line items

INCOME: Just our paychecks this month, no extra income.

• $193.33 from Kyle’s side hustle, divided as usual

GIVING:

• 10% of our stipends to our church
• $50 to the missionary we support

RETIREMENT SAVINGS: Our usual amount, 17%-ish.

Non-discretionary spending

Rent: $870.

Internet: Our bill finally caught up with us, so we’re paying $34.99 now near the beginning of each month.

Cell phones: Kyle’s usual $69.69; due to credits to my Republic Wireless account, we didn’t pay anything for my cell this month!

Discretionary spending

Groceries: We were way over in groceries this month, even before our spending on our Thanksgiving dishes.  Typical winter behavior, I guess!  We had 12 different grocery transactions this month, which is unusually high.   I didn’t stick to my normal way of eating so we probably bought more junk food than normal.

Gas:  Two tanks as usual for our around-town driving.

Restaurants: Just two eating-out occasions this month – once to grab food before a BYOD event after church and once for a date after watching Gravity.

Electricity and Gas: We spent $88.12.  That’s great that it was under budget, but a little worrying because this should have been a month with very low power costs for us as the weather was very temperate.  So we will probably have to keep an eye on this category.

Water: Our bill this month was $37.20, so only slightly under budget.

Every month we have a few transactions that do not fall under either our budget or our targeted savings.

• We spent $42.99 on a shelf rack for our kitchen to mitigate the tiny amount of countertop/storage space we have.
• Kyle bought some hooks at Home Depot for our new kitchen rack for $2.54 so we can hang some pans from the sides of the rack.

Spending Out of Targeted Savings

We spent $562.36 out of these accounts and transferred $81.83 in above our normal savings rates.

Travel and Personal Gifts

We spent $118.51 out of this account on our Thanksgiving trip to northern Virginia.  That was composed of two tanks of gas, parking in garage during my 10-year high school reunion, and a meal out.

Nest Egg

We finally finished putting all our moving reimbursements and such into this account.  We still have a bit of the expenses to repay but at least that will be once per month with our budget leftovers and not randomly as we receive money.

We repaid this account $30.17 from our Electronics account.

Cars

We paid 6 months of car insurance this month for $357.85.

Entertainment

We saw TWO movies in theaters this month – Gravity and Ender’s Game!  I think it had been about a year since the last time we saw a movie in theaters.  We spent $25 on Gravity (evening movie, 3D glasses) but wised up for Ender’s Game and went to a matinee for $11.

Appearance

I spent $50 on a haircut.

Electronics

This account is perpetually in debt to our Nest Egg…  We should probably fix that eventually.  We repaid to our Nest Egg $30.17, which was a portion of the headphones we bought for Kyle last month.

Medical

no spending this month

Charitable Giving

no giving this month

CSA

no spending this month

Taxes

no transfers this month

Camera

no spending this month

Budget Adjustments

No budget changes needed this month.

Bottom line: We barely squeaked in with some small budget leftovers this month.  We really overspent between our groceries and the rack we bought and there wasn’t much give elsewhere to make up for it.  Anyway, we had $27.54 in leftovers that we moved to our Nest Egg to repay ourselves for our move.

Have you overdrafted your checking account (since you have been on top of your finances)?  Did Thanksgiving throw off your November budget?