October Wrap-up - Outstanding!

DannyB

This popped up in my Notifications today...



... triggering a review of my October Spending Plan... so here I go with my monthly recap

October ended with a bunch of little ghosts, goblins, princesses and super hero's showing up at my front door ready for tricks or treats!  This year my wife decided we would give out individual sized bags of Goldfish cheese crackers and chocolate chip soft & chew granola bars!

Budget-wise it was all treats and no tricks!

Income after bills and saving:

• Income all present and accounted for!  All our expected income was received along with a few odds and ends that showed up during the month - interest payments, receipts from sales of a few no-longer-needed personal items, etc.
• All anticipated recurring bills and subscriptions (Fixed Monthly Expenses) paid in full and on time.  Now to see if I receive the "Prompt payer" achievement badge for October.  So far I have yet to receive it  , but I keep trying! 
• All Savings Goals received planned contributions.  In 2023 I will be eliminating the various savings goals I created in 2022 to cover my annual, semi-annual and non-monthly fixed expenses.  Instead these funds will remain in our various investment accounts until the month needed.  We will consolidate several current savings goals that cover our flexible irregular expenses into a single goal and those funds will reside in one of our checking accounts until needed.  My wife and I have become quite comfortable with the way Simplifi accounts for Savings Goals funds in the Accounts List.  We can see at a glance what money is in reserve and what money is available for spending on any given day. (Edit: There is a lot of discussion in this forum about adding "roll over" ability in the Spending Plan. These discussions, here and here include lots of thoughts and input about a roll over feature in the Spending Plan, Planned Spending.)

Once again, it's nice to see GREEN all the way down each list.

Planned Spending:

• We start each month with a certain amount that we have assigned to our various Planned (or Flexible) spending categories.  When I finalized October this morning our actual spending came in at 78% of what we had planned. That is we spent 22% less than planned for.
• However, we ended up going over budget in our grocery category by 25%.  Since we had surplus in other categories I was able to make adjustments to cover this overage without affecting our overall budget.  We will keep an eye on this category to see if we will need to make a long term adjustment, but the overage can be accounted for by the current inflation rate but even more so because we had several unplanned for family get togethers in October... and those growing grandkids can eat A LOT OF FOOD!

Other Spending:  We ended up with just over $100 in "other spending."  I'm still not completely clear on how an expense ends up in Other Spending and in most months when I review and assign categories or change categories Simplifi moves these expenses into one of our Planned Spending categories... but not always.

Bottom line: After all income and expenses were accounted for, we ended October with a 49% surplus! Talk about tricks or treats!

But hold on, there's a reason our surplus is so high in October.  My wife decided she wants to buy a new automobile before she retires.  After consulting with our financial advisor we came up with a plan to make this happen which included dropping her contributions to one of her deferred income savings accounts through her employer.  As a result her take home pay has increased rather substantially and thus we have a significant increase in our monthly disposable income leading to this rather high surplus.  All of this extra income is going into a savings account that will cover the cost of the automobile purchase down the road (HA! Get it? New automobile... down the road! That was not an intentional pun but it's a good one!).

So that's it for October... thanks again to the team at Simplifi for this great tool that helps us plan and track our monthly budget! 

Now... on to November!