$20K Savings Challenge.......March Update

In our family we save money.
It is important to us to put money aside for "rainy days".  You know.....those unexpected days when things happen in your life that you can't plan on, but that DO happen and they cost you money you didn't know you'd need to pay out.

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, investments and retirement savings.  It's automatic so we are never tempted to NOT put it into savings.
Once the automatic savings, plus taxes and medical/dental/vision payments 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, etc.) and our variable bills(like food, eating out, etc.)  Anything left over once our monthly expenses are paid, I put aside into a Savings Challenge. 

For 2013 I am continuing my Yearly Savings Challenge.  I am going to keep the Goal amount at $20,000 again this year.

On to the March report.....

I have posted my MARCh End of Month $20K $AVING$ CHALLENGE Totals.
Check out the side bar to your right 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 $1,666.67.

I have to report that we finished up March in the black!
The extra cash amount we ended the month of March with?.......$1,352.60

Income
We had $1280.04 left over from our income after our monthly expenses were deducted. 

Add in 2 quarterly dividends, some bank interest and a rebate check, and we get another $122.56.  This brought our gain to $1,352.60 for March.

Outgo

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

HERE are the GOOD THINGS

*  The water bill was $13.18 lower than Feb.

* The electric bill was $99.82 lower than Feb.(Our heat is electric.)

HERE are the BAD THINGS

*  The credit card bill went up $98.91(but was still paid off at month's end.)

*  The cash withdrawals were up $200 over last month.
*  The doctor bills were up $67.05 from last month.
*  The long distance phone bill was up $4.01 from last month.
*  We owed $44 in state taxes.
*  The yearly sewage bill was paid this month.

*  The yearly local taxes were due this month.(I received a discount from paying them before April 1.)

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

We managed to stay well within our $400 food budget in March.

The 2013 TOTAL so far.....
With 3 month behind us, our Savings Grand Total for 2013 stands at $5,489.63.  Only $14,510.37 left to save and 9 months left to accomplish it.

We just missed our $1,666.67 target goal for the month, but not by much.  Considering the yearly taxes and the yearly sewage bills paid, I'd call March. a WIN for us on the money front.

Looking ahead for April......

*  We don't have any quarterly or yearly bills due this month.
*  Since #2 Son got his driver's license, we have an additional car insurance bill due this month, to the tune of almost $400. sigh.

*  Due to my health scare and visit to the ER and hospital, the bills will start to roll in this month, so I can't even hazard a guess if we'll be able to make our monthly savings target of $1666.67 in April.  We shall see in the fullness of time.

So how was your March financially?

Have you finished paying off those presents from last Christmas you put on credit?
Did you spend less than the income you made in March?
Did you received any "extra" or unexpected money in March and what did you do with it?
Did you stay within your budget or not?
Did you pay off any debt or put extra toward your mortgage principle?
Did you receive a tax refund and what did you do with that money?

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

Cliff Diving & When Is 2% Not 2%?

Well we got our first paycheck since falling off the cliff.
We have it direct deposited into the credit union.
My eyeballs nearly exploded when I saw a check with $300 LESS in it....$300 less for 2 weeks.
Yikes!
I grabbed the calculator and saw that if that $300 was 2% of our income, we'd be pulling in $390,000 a year.

Ummm, last I looked we were no where NEAR that neighborhood! lolz

BTW--someone making $390K a year is seeing $7,800 LESS in their take-home pay this year.  I am sure they are feeling the pain of that as much as all of us who make way less and are not seeing our 2%s.

Then I remembered that we have local taxes for the year, that are taken out of the 1st 2 paychecks in January, so January's pay is less anyway.
But still, that didn't cover a $300 reduction for 2 weeks of work.

And then Hubs brought home his paystub and there was a note on it.
A note explaining that the bookkeeping dept. of his company was asleep at the switch and took too much for something or other out of everyone's paycheck, and they would be adding this amount back in to the next check.

With the position we are in with the money, this "problem" was a non-problem for us.

But if we had no savings or emergency fund and needed Hubs entire check to cover our expenses for the next 2 weeks, having a $300 hole in the funds available could have been trouble.

Living paycheck to paycheck, with no savings would have meant going without things(hopefully not needs-like food or delaying paying an electric bill or mortgage payment)or putting some things on credit.
And if we had credit card debt already, it would have added to our debt load and/or added to the fees and interest we had to pay.

So my question to everyone......if your paycheck was reduced in error and you didn't have access to a significant chunk of money, could you weather that storm without financial repercussions?

Clearly $300 taken out of our paycheck in error was NOT a foreseeable problem, so there was no way to lessen it's impact.
Unless we lived below our means and made putting money aside for emergencies a priority in our financial lives BEFORE this happened.

Shit happens.
Make sure you aren't caught without a shovel.

Sluggy