our budget outline

with today's post we begin the nitty gritty. i am trying to keep each day's post as short as possible, so today i will only post our budget outline. in the days to come i will go into more specifics about each category. as always, feel free to ask any questions :) you are welcome to set up your budget exactly like we have ours, but of course you can alter it to fit your family's needs.

jake's income:

• tithe 10% of gross pay
• mortgage
• water/trash (fluctuates, but we do have a specific amount set of the approximate average)
• electricity (we have recently signed up for duke power's equal payment plan - no charge to us, and much easier for planning the amount to allocate here!)
• cell phones ($83 total for us both! i'm proud of that one :) )
• groceries (includes couponing, household items, personal care, etc.)
• car payment
• car insurance (we pay this once a year, but still put back money for it every month)
• life insurance
• taylor's health insurance (thank you, state of nc, for making it basically impossible for us to add me onto jake's plan)
• cable/internet (we cancelled our cable yesterday, but i wanted you to see where this used to go)
• netflix
• savings 5% of net pay ("net" as we consider it is after tithe has been taken out of his paycheck, too)
• investments 5% of net pay
• home improvement - anything over $x (his pay fluctuates month to month, so x = the lowest amount he's gotten paid in the last 6 months)
• gas - jake
• gas - taylor
• car maintenance
• gifts
• christmas (this includes christmas gifts and decor or other celebratory enhancements)
• eat out
• activities
• vacation (we put back as much as we can afford - not much - so hopefully we'll be able to get away occasionally. this category's new for us)
• routine medical care (co-pays, prescriptions, etc)
• clothing NEEDS (we really have all we need. anything we want comes out of any play money we have. so this is literally for when all of our underwear has holes in it and we HAVE to have new ones.)
• beauty (my hair cuts, birchbox, makeup, etc)
• weightlifting (idk what he does with this. gets protein powder and barbells and stuff i guess)
• dolly (vet, grooming, food, etc. we're hoping to keep this as low as possible)

my income:

• tithe 10% of gross pay
• savings 10% of net pay (see "net" definition above)
• jake play money (he uses it to eat lunch out during the week)
• taylor play money (for my manis, obviously)
• student loans: minimums
• extra payment (a specific dollar amount) to the smallest loan

savings (where the money goes when we transfer it to the savings account):

• emergency home repair (air conditioning breaks, water line bursts - i don't even know what that means, whatever. this is for true "we-have-to-do-this-now stuff)
• emergency medical
• car replacement (the goal is to never finance a car again)
• unemployment

wow, this was a lot longer than anticipated. i wanted you to see every single line item. will explain more later. hope it's helped!