February '25 Wrap-up, A Just for Fun Post

DannyB

Here it is my February wrap-up… for what it's worth. First off, February was an uneventful month overall. We had a couple of birthdays (BD gifts covered with via our "Gifting" Planned Spending w/rollover funds), a couple of doctor appointments (co-pays covered by our "Providers" Planned Spending funds) a few soccer games (event tickets covered by our "Other Fun Stuff" Planned Spending funds, and no surprises (Surprise and Misc Savings Goal untouched)!

So here it goes, my February Spending Plan wrap-up:

Income after bills and savings:

• Income:
  • All planned income was received with no hiccups.
  • I do include the interest paid out by our banks as recurring planned income. Interest payments vary a little based on our balances, but this interest is taxable income and adds a little bit to our bottom line.
• Bills:
  • We have 17 recurring expenses listed under "Bills."
  • For no particular reason, I include our landscape maintenance, pool, and house cleaning services as "Bills."
  • We pay our house cleaning service based on their cleaning schedule which is every two weeks. This recurring expense is set up to be paid every two weeks which ensures that the months with 3 cleanings is already incorporated into future Spending Plans for those months.
  • The one bill listed that did not get paid was our city utilities bill. This happens occasionally because: 1.) the due date for this bill is at the end of each month; 2.) this bill is set up for auto pay initiated from the city's side of the payment; 3.) When there is a holiday and the 1st of the following month lands on a weekend, the billing process is delayed and the bill is not paid and settled until after the end of the month; therefore, this bill goes unpaid until the following month which throws my follow-on month's Spending Plan into a minor quandary as it tries to figure out what to do with two payments for the same bill in the same month.
  • All other bills are green (Paid).
• Subscriptions:
  • All recurring expenses I included under Subscriptions are green.
  • We have 10 monthly recurring "subscriptions."
  • In February, one of our annual subscriptions renewed and is included in our February Spending Plan. We have enough leeway in our monthly plan to absorb this payment, but it is also included in the monthly contribution to our Annual Expenses Saving Goal, so I do have "extra" money available to cover this payment if necessary.
• Transfers & Credit Card Payments
  • Ah, transfers!
  • I have eight monthly recurring transfers that are visible (included) in my Spending Plan that reduce my available income.
  • I have three active credit cards that are paid off every month and are invisible (excluded) in my Spending Plan. These payments (transfers) do not impact my monthly available Spending Plan income. The charges on all three cards are generated by monthly expenses already accounted for in other parts of the Spending Plan.
  • All transfers were completed successfully.
• Savings Goals
  • I have three savings goals I include in my Spending Plan and each SG is associated with a unique HYS.
  • I made full contributions to all three, including the monthly interest payment to each account.
  • In February, I transferred some excess accumulation out of our checking account and into savings accounts and a secondary checking account. To keep the Available balance in each savings account at $0.00 I made contributions to the SGs associated with these accounts. The result was to go into the red in my Spending Plan. I scratched my head for a few minutes and then changed the visibility of the transfer to my secondary checking to be included in the Spending Plan. This took care of the bright red circle/donut graph but added some surplus to my Spending Plan available/left at end of month amount.

Planned Spending

• I have nine Planned Spending categories.
• We came in 30% under total Planned Spending.
• I didn't need to make any adjustments within our Planned Spending categories.
• I have one Planned Spending category with rollover activated. I'm still debating with myself about this feature as it is currently deployed.

Other Spending

• All transactions that landed in Other Spending found a home elsewhere in my Spending Plan once they were categorized correctly.
• I have an outstanding refund that I'm still waiting for that rode through the month in Other Spending as a positive. I'm not sure if this is correct behavior for an expected refund, but there it was. However, when the month rolled over that Other Spending item disappeared from February Other Spending and is now showing in March's Other Spending.
• We made several Travel related expenditures during February. These will typically show up in Other Spending where they sit until I get a chance to edit the transaction details. All travel related expenses are excluded from my Spending Plan and are paid for out of our Travel Savings Goal funds. They remain listed under Other Spending but are grayed out.

We ended February with a 30% surplus according to the Spending Plan, but that includes the "extra" already existing surplus I moved from checking 1 to checking 2 so our actual surplus is closer to 14%, a comfortable margin for me.