January wrap-up: Just Jubilant

DannyB

Here we go again... another trip around the sun! In January we traveled somewhere around .542 AU or 50,382,048 miles or 81,082,047 km.  Fun fact, pretty much ALL of US American history has taken place during ONE SINGLE orbit of Pluto around Sol!  It's stuff like that that helps keep things in perspective when I start to get a bit stressed over things like how January went in terms of income and spending.  But then again, the numbers concerning orbits of planets don't really impact my everyday coming and going but numbers in the Spending plan do, so here it is, my January wrap-up.

January is the last month in which my wife and I will have income from active employment.  Going forward our cost-of-living will be covered by pensions, social security, passive income and draws on our retirement savings.  I have to admit, when I think about it too much, I do feel a bit of anxiety as we move into the next chapter of our lives... so here we go - January '23 Spending Plan Review.

Income after bills & saving:

• As with the previous 12 months, all planned and expected income "Received" Every now and then I think about the idea of zero-based budgeting, in reality, I haven't had much success with setting up and following such a budget.  However, in the coming year I will be more conscious of how our income matches our outflow and will work towards a successful zero-based budget.  In terms of Simplifi, my goal this year is to manage our income and outflow so that we end each month with little or no "Left at end of month" which I think is equivalent to a zero-based budget.
• Bills: All bills were paid during the course of the month on time and in full. Looking at the total for Bills I was surprised by the final number... it's much lower than expected.  Then I remembered I made some adjustments in January, moving some recurring payments out of Bills and into Subscriptions following the ideas presented here. In the end it is a bit arbitrary on how to use these two sections.  There is some "rhyme and reason" for how I made the moves and I do like the outcome of this rearrangement - s nice symmetry of the number of recurring expenses found in each section and the total amount spent in each section.
• Subscriptions: All paid... see above.
• Savings Goals: I closed out 2022 and set up new Savings goals for 2023.  I still have a couple of goals from 2022 that hold funds for a couple of expenses due early this year.  One was paid out in January and one will be paid out in February. I have started contributing to my new, and hopefully, improved savings goals hack for non-monthly fixed and flexible expenses... we'll see. We did use money from our Travel/Vacation SG to cover the cost of a trip we had been planning to celebrate my wife's retirement. The particular SG would benefit from this feature request as it is an ongoing SG that we will fund and draw on from month to month and year to year.

Planned Spending: 

• Nailed it!  I did have funds available to release in each of my 6 of our Planned spending categories but it wasn't much all told.  I had to make one adjustment in January moving money from a couple of categories to cover an overage in one category but again it was not a significant amount and fell comfortably within or overall planned flexible spending.

Other Spending:

• Ended up with two expenses that landed in other spending for January and I'm comfortable with counting them as just that, other spending.  
• Impact on overall Spending plan was negligible.  
• In a zero-based budget, it seems to me that there should not be any expenses landing in something like Other spending unless I have allotted funds to cover what is, in essence, miscellaneous spending but then it wouldn't be "Other spending."
• Right now other spending comes out of the "available" / "Left at end of month" pot which is money NOT assigned to any particular job so to speak. 

Once again we ended the month with a surplus as we make the transition to retirement.  Now we will start using all the surplus to supplement the years ahead.