$24K Savings Challenge.......October 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 October report.....

I have posted my October 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 October with a really large chunk of change.
The extra amount we ended the month of  October with?.......$6,451.86.

Income

We had $6019.72 left over from our income after our monthly expenses were deducted.
This large amount was mostly due to a third paycheck in October.
 

Other monies received in October totaled $432.14.  This included interest made on non-retirement accounts, a refund on our car insurance and a Conference dinner.

This brought us to our gain of $6,451.86.
Since we have no debt, this goes into savings.

Outgo

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

HERE are the GOOD THINGS

 

*  The water bill went down another $5.10 from September.
*  Cable and phone charges were approx. the same as last month.
 

HERE are the BAD THINGS

 

*  Car insurance due on my car.
*  The quarterly garbage bill was due.
*  Dental bill due.
*  The credit card bill(paid off each month)was up $295 from last month due to our family reunions trip and the OC mini-vacay.
*  Electric bill was up $24.44 because the heat got turned on.
 

 

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

The 2014 GRAND TOTAL.....
With 10 months accounted for, our Savings Grand Total for 2014 is $23,475.69.
 

Only $524.31 Total left to meet the yearly goal and 2 months left to dig this up out of our income.
That comes out to an average of $262.16 for each of the next 2 months. 
As our Nov. and Dec. overages average about $1000 each month I don't think we'll have any trouble finding a spare $524.31 ;-)

I will be curious to see how much we have leftover for the last 2 months of the year above and beyond the $524.31 we need to reach our goal of $24K.
  

 

Looking ahead for November......

*  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 November.

*  We have 2 trips to #2 Son's school to get/return him for Thanksgiving break so gas(thus the c/c bill)will be higher in November.

 

So how was your October financially?
  

Did you spend less than the income you had in October?
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