March '15 UnExpected Expenses

So March has been a busy month year after year for us. It is my son's and nephew's birthday early in month, which is always the same weekend as the school carnival. Plus now with cub scouts we also have the Pinewood Derby, Blue and Gold Banquet and two den meetings. Spring Break happens in there and we volunteer to help with making packs of food for those who cannot afford food.

Here is where we over spent this month:
Groceries - $164.04
Clothing - $9.03
Electricity - $68.12

Auto Insurance $.25
Medicine - $64.90
Pets - $6.36
Household - $60.19
Kids activity -$149
Gifts - $41.57
Fast Food - $114.79
Convenience Food - $9.47
Entertainment - $21.59
Birthday Party - $148.54
Tax Payment - $89

So the overage in groceries was due to shopping too much at Costco and supplying the birthday part and weekend with food. Clothing was over due to buying items for the baseball season. Electricity was up this month because they balanced out the Budget Billing. This will be down a lot more next month. Auto Insurance has gone up due to no reason. For medicine my husband's insurance has changed and he has to pay a deductible before they will pay anything. With the two guinea pigs eating, well like pigs, our pet budget needs to be increased. Household was over since I bought some supplies at Costco to stock up, salt for the water softener, and I had to fix a hole in the boot of the washer. Gift was over due to a co-worker leaving and my son's birthday. I never budget in fast food or convenience food. I would really like this to be zero or we would take away grocery money to cover these extra expenses. We ate out one night due to back to back conferences. I didn't think we would have time but in reality we would have time to go home for mac and cheese. I also bought pizza for my son's birthday. We also ate McDonald's during spring break. Convenience food is down a lot from other months, and I hope to keep this up. For entertainment we went out for drinks due to my co-worker leaving and had one Red Box rental. We did have to pay into some taxes but received a decent refund considering I didn't clam zero on my second job (lesson learned to claim one or zero if you have a second job). I also paid $149 for my daughter, which she wanted to go to this camp for a week for her birthday.

The wins this month were that for the second month water bill was low, my husband got a raise, and we have a tax refund. We also paid off the credit card which was a balance transfer from the house siding, and paid a good portion of the car loans. The bad part was, it was paid off due to my husband taking money out of his retirement account. It wasn't something that I agreed with and it is a fail/easy out on our Dave Ramsey debt free journey. I'm not going to dwell on it. I'm just going to move forward and believe that we can save, save, save to get this all back in time. Looking at quitting my second job makes me nervous. We won't have a lot of extra after paying 15% toward retirement, but I know we need to kick it into high gear. My husband will get more raises this year and hopefully next year I will get a significant raise/promotion. All in due time.

If we stay on track we should be debt free except the house in 3-4 months.