Unplanned Spending

In the three month’s that we’ve been sharing out Income and Spending reports, we’ve had some severe expenses which were either unexpected or atypical.

August

In August we purchased new tires for our Explorer. The $700 spent was expected for many months beforehand.

We use sinking funds to save smaller amounts each month so the cash is available to pay for tires when they are needed. We fund the Explorer’s tires $19.80 each month so that we’ll have $930 in August of 2022 when we expect to buy our next set.

See August’s Income and Spending Report

September



I purchased plane tickets for our return flights, and the $800 spent was a real budget buster. Vacation spending is something that we can expect to have each year but the money spent on our upcoming cruise has spiraled out of control with the high cost of airfare. Our big irregular expense in September was for our upcoming Vacation I purchased plane tickets for our return flights, and the $800 spent was a real budget buster. Vacation spending is something that we can expect to have each year but the money spent on our upcoming cruise has spiraled out of control with the high cost of airfare.

October

Last month we had two big unexpected expenses.

We spent $440 on Pets. $300 of this was unexpected. Our family dog had to be put to sleep due to a cancerous growth. We spent the rest of that money adopting a new family pet.

$400 was spent at the dentist. Erica had a cleaning and our daughter had a filling.

See October’s Income and Spending Report

November and Beyond

While we haven’t finished tabulating our spending for this month we can guesstimate a couple big expenses.

Medical Expenses. My son has started going to a therapist and with it, we have an expected $140 each visit. We may spend $400 to $500 here alone. Erica has a few cavities to get filled and I expect this to run $200 after the dentist applies some overcharges from last month. In January we’ll be able to fund our HSA again and that should help with these expenses.

Christmas Spending. We have an $1850 budget for Christmas this year. This will be a big expense split between November and December. We’ll cash flow it as we haven’t saved any for Christmas through the year. Starting in January we’ll have a sinking fund dedicating $155 each month towards this expected expense.