$24K Savings Challenge.....JULY Update

Every year I keep a close eye on our monthly expenses and our monthly income.
Our income is mainly the salary my Hubs draws from his job.  We have money taken off each paycheck from the top to put into savings, before we even get our hands on it.  This money that's taken goes into various pots....life insurance, health insurance premiums, long term care insurance premiums, investments and retirement savings.  It's automatic so we are never tempted to NOT put it into savings.

Once the automatic savings amounts, plus taxes and medical/dental/vision premiums are taken out, it leaves what we get to "live on".  From this amount we budget for bills, both monthly and irregular bills(semi-annual, annual etc.) and our variable bills(like food, eating out, clothing  etc.)  Anything left over once our monthly expenses are paid, I put aside into a Savings Challenge. 

For 2014 I am continuing my Yearly Savings Challenge.  I am raising the Goal amount slightly to $24,000 this year, $4K more than my goal for last year.

On to the July report.....

I have posted my July End of Month $24K $AVING$ CHALLENGE Totals.
Check out the Savings Challenge page tab at the top of the blog for the specific numbers.

I have 2 goals each month.....
The 1st is to actually finish each month in the black and not the red.
The 2nd is to hit the targeted savings amount of $2,000.

I have to report that we finished up July with a greater than needed amount.
The extra amount we ended the month of  July with?.......$2,421.10.

Income
We had $2317.04 left over from our income after our monthly expenses were deducted.
 

Other monies received in July totaled $100.56.  This included interest made on non-retirement accounts and a per diem from Hubs' work.

This brought us to our gain of $2,421.10.
Since we have no debt anymore, this goes into savings.

Outgo

As for the expenses this July, here are the good and the bad side of things....

HERE are the GOOD THINGS

 

*  Flute lesson bill was $80 less than in June(3 less lessons in July).
*  Both cash spent and credit card bill were about the same as last month's bills respectively.
*  Many of our regular monthly expenses were the same as in June or just a little more and we didn't have any non-monthly expenses which was good for our bottom line.
 

HERE are the BAD THINGS

 

*  We paid $55 fee for #2Son to be in marching band at his college.
*  The water bill went up by almost 25%.  This was most probably due to extra laundry and showers because of 2 extra people in the house.
*  The electric bill was up $59 due to a/c use.
*  We paid a medical bill of $704 for #1Son.
*  I spent money on my vacation, checks of $160.22 and $420 in cash.

 (The rest was put on the c/c so will show up and be paid in August.)
 

The Food Budget costs for July are in another post, which is located HERE.

The 2014 GRAND TOTAL.....
With 7 months accounted for, our Savings Grand Total for 2014 is $14,093.64
Super excited that we are on target now to save $24K, since we have saved an amount equal to $2K a month now for 7 months.  Let's hope this trend continues. 8-)
Our monthly average is $2013.37 saved.

Only $9,906.36 left to meet the yearly goal and 5 months left to dig this up out of our income.
  

 

Looking ahead for August......

*  I will continue to do this Savings Challenge and report in each month on how it is going.

*  Both the semi-annual car insurance bill and the house insurance bill are due this month, totaling $1,903.20 combined.

*  The credit card is already up to $3,425.95 and we have 10 days until it closes and we get our August statement.  $1,304.32 of that is for #2 Son's new laptop and software for college.  $309.26 is from gas purchases on my trip.  I've still to break down all my trip costs at some later date.  I will need to dip into our savings challenge monies from last year to pay for at least a part of my trip costs so we don't go into the red in August.  We usually pay for vacations(at least a part of them)with our ersatz EF/last year's savings challenge funds so I was fully expecting to do this anyway.
 

 

So how was your July financially?
  

Did you spend less than the income you had in July?
Did you stay within your budget or not?
Did you pay off any debts or put extra toward your mortgage principle or into savings in an emergency fund or a retirement account?

If you posted your financial progress on your own blog, leave a link in the comments so we can go check you out your progress too and celebrate with you!

Sluggy