Month: July 2007

Every Month Is An Unusual Month

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Now that I’ve been budgeting for a few months I’ve noticed that every month has unusual expenses. In May I had my oral surgery which was expensive and limited how much I could pay down my debt and contribute to my emergency fund. I figured that in June I’d be able to put a lot more money towards these since I wouldn’t have the oral surgery bill. However, things didn’t turn out that way. I had an unexpected car repair which took quite a bit of money. Also I had to pay for three months of health insurance when I thought I could pay one month at a time. I also had to pay my personal property tax, renew my license and registration on my car, and pay for the next six months of auto insurance. While those expenses were expected when combined with the unexpected expenses I didn’t have nearly the surplus I expected.

This month is starting off the same. I knew I would have some dental expenses but they are already higher than I thought they would be. I think I need to budget $100-$200 a month for unexpected expenses. If it turns out I don’t actually have any unexpected expenses in a month than I can go ahead and contribute that amount  towards my debt or savings. I’m not sure if this is the best solution but it is what I came up with. I’d be happy to hear any suggestions any readers would like to contribute.

Rip Off Medical Plans

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Many companies are now offering what they call limited benefit medical plans. These are basically plans that have a very low annual cap on the benefits they pay off. My employer recently sent me a brochure for one of these plans. They had plans with costs as low as $6.95 a week. With this plan you would only have to pay a $20 co-pay to see a doctor. I thought this seemed like a decent deal until I read that the annual cap on benefits is $500. The cost of this plan is $361.40 a year, that means the maximum amount you could actually benefit from this plan is $138.60 in a year. It seems to me that my employer is trying to make a profit off of me rather than offer a benefit. To make this deal worse many of the employees are young and/or have limited education and may not realize how limited their medical coverage is.  Employees would probably be better off having no medical coverage at all than with one of these limited benefit plans. For more information about these plans read this article at USA Today.

Alternative Income Update

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My alternative income total for June was $543.68. This is my best total ever but it is not sustainble right now. There were several sources of income that will not be repeated or at least won’t all be repeated in the same month. I estimate I could live on about $1000 a month without job related expenses,dental bills, and debt repayment. It will be a while before all those are eliminated so a more realistic total for monthly living expenses would be $1500. That means I’m about a third of the way there. Right now I plan to keep working even if I do get my alternative income to the level where it pays my monthly expenses. It would still be nice to know that I could pay my bills even if I were to quit my job or for some reason be unable to work.

June Income

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Here is a summary of my income for June.

Jobs

$1850.11

Medical Study

$200

Online Income

$235.84

Ebay/Half.com

$61.66

Survey

$15

Interest

$21.18

Mystery Shopping

$10

Total

$2393.79

I’m pleased with the increase in income. My job income should go up in July because I’ll receive a third paycheck for one job due to how the paydays fall. Online income for June includes a Google payout and a text link sale. Since neither of these is likely to happen again in July the online income total will go down. Ebay/Half income will also probably be down. Medical study income will only be $100 this month. The other sources of income will remain roughly the same and won’t make a significant difference in my income.

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June Expenses

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Here is the summary of my June expenses.

Rent/Household

$481.30

Utilities

$116.85

Transportation

$615.73

Food

$126.50

Medical/Dental

$218.22

Entertainment

$64.63

Debt

$108.64

Total

$1781.37

The Utilities total includes the purchase of a new cell phone and my last natural gas bill. With not having those expenses in July this total should come down significantly. The transportation total includes a parking ticket,car repair, insurance, personal property tax, and registration. Since none of these expenses should recur this month this total should also be reduced significantly. I spent too much on food last month, I plan to cut that down to $75 for this month. My entertainment expense should be slightly lower this month.

My medical/dental expense will be larger this month because I’m having lots of dental work done. I hope to use any money saved from cutting other expense categories to pay down my debt so the debt expense total should also increase.