June 2017 Budget & Goals

This is my first in a regular sequence of posts about my monthly budget and goals. The start of each month I will share my budget for that month, as well as four monthly goals: two financial, and two personal.

For budgeting and monitoring my transactions, I use YNAB (You Need a Budget). The system is really easy to use and set up, and their budgeting philosophies make a lot of sense to me. (This isn’t a sponsored post, this is just what I like to use!) It has a lot of cool features that you can check out, I won’t dive too deeply into them now. One thing to note is that with YNAB, you set your category budgets at the beginning of the month; however, if you overspend in a certain category, you just move your funds from a different category to make up the difference. Every penny is accounted for at all times. Because of this I do my best to use my debit card for all transactions, since cash purchases are so much harder to keep track of.

Here’s what my June breakdown looks like:

At the end of the month, I’ll compare my category totals (and shifts!) to this to see how well I actually planned. Believe me, I’m not expecting perfection.

In addition, my goals for the month of June are:

• Pay $100 toward my credit card debt each week. I get paid on a weekly basis, and this will make it easier than one $400 payment all at once.
• Make my lunch for work 3 days a week. Of course, 5 days is ideal, but – let’s be real – it just won’t happen in reality. (This is an approximate savings of $66/month).
• Wear half of my shoes this month. I currently own 32 pairs of shoes (and I just sold and/or donated 9 pairs in the month of May!) but I only wear, like, 5 pairs on a regular basis because they’re the most comfortable for walking on my commute. My goal is to wear my comfies for walking, and bring some of my other shoes (that I love!) and put them on when I get to work. Just to elevate my look a little bit, and make all that shoe money I spent worthwhile.
• Go paperless. I’ve heard good things about Scannable by Evernote, so my goal is to scan and shred as much paper as I can and get rid of some paper file-clutter.

Other things to consider this month:

• I am hosting my sister’s bridal shower this month, and there are sure to be some extra expenses from that.
• I am also ordering my bridesmaid dress this month, so that expense will skew my budget a bit (but I get to pick my own dress! Love that sister of mine, she knows how to make a girl happy).

What are your goals for June?

Green Chameleon