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Moving from One Category to Another

April 30th, 2015 at 10:57 pm

Pretty sure last month was financially, um, challenging. Not a financial disaster because we have an emergency fund and we live on last month's money and we can move money from one category to another. But still... not great.

And it's stuff we can't really control: medical and dental expenses. We have good insurance, and we're almost at our deductible. But medical this month was $730 (hope that we've paid for the final bill for the endoscopy I had to have!) and dental was $217.

I am going to go now and try to use other categories to knock those down a bit:
- underspend on utilities
- underpend on water/sewer
- underspend on groceries
- underspend on dining out
- underspend on fuel
- underspend on spending money/cash
- underspend on pets

Total of all of the underspend is about $400. It's not $950, but I think I can get the medical and dental to zero in about 3 months this way.

Posted in Frugal Living | 5 Comments »

5 Responses to “Moving from One Category to Another”

  1. snafu Says:
    April 30th, 2015 at 11:09 pm 1430435381
    1430435381

    I guess I understand your desire to compensate for medical/dental expenses but I don't feel the need to squeeze the budget/spend categories so hard for an arbitrary 3 month deadline. What would happen if it was stretched 6-8 months? I'd had to see DD denied a few small pleasures for the sake of a date on the calendar. Do you see a lot of excess in your spending history?

    ...just an unedited opinion

  2. rob62521 Says:
    May 1st, 2015 at 01:15 am 1430442939
    1430442939

    Hope you can underspend and save some. It is frustrating when things cost more than anticipated.

  3. My English Castle Says:
    May 1st, 2015 at 02:06 am 1430445986
    1430445986

    ugh--dental expenses. Awfulness.

  4. Buendia Says:
    May 1st, 2015 at 02:32 am 1430447540
    1430447540

    I'm not definitely sticking to 3 months or even 4 or whatever, I promise! It's really all dependent on our grocery and dining out spending. They're pretty generous, so if we underspend there we can knock down the medical debt. So I agree with you, Snafu! Not to mention that summer is coming, and we tend to want to eat out a bit more in the summer when it's warm. We also have a soccer coach staying with us, so that increases the food budget a bit. We'll see how we do!

  5. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    May 2nd, 2015 at 04:42 pm 1430584951
    1430584951

    Buendia - April was an expensive month for me to due to medical expenses coming in. Thank goodness for a 3 paycheck month! (Even though I use YNAB, I prefer to use the 3rd paycheck in the actual month I receive it rather than sending it forward to the next month. If I wasn't buffered, I would do it differently.)

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