$24K Savings Challenge......September 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 September report.....

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

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 September with a good chunk of change.
The extra amount we ended the month of  September with?.......$2606.55.

Income

We had $2200.26 left over from our income after our monthly expenses were deducted.
 

Other monies received in September totaled $406.29.  This included interest made on non-retirement accounts, a per diem, 2 dividends and a refund on our car insurance after getting rid of the car early in September(the car insurance refund for the minivan will probably arrive sometime in October).

This brought us to our gain of $2,606.55.
Since we have no debt, this goes into savings.

Outgo

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

HERE are the GOOD THINGS

 

*  The water bill went down by $20.43 from August.
*  Cash spent went down by $170 from August.
*  The electric bill went down by $60.89 from August.
*  Cable and phone charges were approx. the same as last month.
*  The credit card bill(paid off in full each month) was low for us(under $1K).
 

HERE are the BAD THINGS

 

*  The school taxes(part of the property taxes)were due.
*  The quarterly garbage bill was due.

Clearly the Good outweighed the Bad this month.  Having all the kids out of the house helped our bottom line.

 

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

The 2014 GRAND TOTAL.....
With 9 months accounted for, our Savings Grand Total for 2014 is $17,023.83.

Our monthly average is $1,891.53 saved at this point in the year.
 

Only $6,976.17 Total left to meet the yearly goal and 3 months left to dig this up out of our income.
That comes out to an average of $2,325.39 for each of the next 3 months. 

Since I shoot for $2K savings per month and there are only 3 months left, we are $976.17 behind the eight ball, as we should have a full $18,000 saved to this point.  Not quite on schedule but REAL close!
October is our 2nd 2 paycheck month for 2014 so unless something runs off the tracks totally, we should be able to eek out enough savings in October to get a bit ahead of schedule.
  

 

Looking ahead for October......

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

*  We have no irregular bills due in October.

*  We will have our Reunion trip c/c bills due in October.  They came to $593.19. The current c/c bill is at $1189.91 and unless Hubs puts more gas charges on the c/c that will be the total owed since the bill closes in 4 days time from now.
 We will also incur more traveling bills this month but they won't be due until November's c/c bill(outside of the one night the hotel has already charged our card).

 

So how was your September financially?
  

Did you spend less than the income you had in September?
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 out your progress too and celebrate with you or commiserate with you!

Sluggy