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Showing posts with the label How to survive on a small income

Thriftism's Monthly Budget - February Report

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As we mentioned at the beginning of January, we are going to post monthly budget updates- So here we are! For a quick reminder, we run our budget off of solely my income of $1200 every two weeks, however this is after insurance is taken out. If this was your total household income, you would gross around $34,000/year and be in the 15% tax bracket. If you were in this tax bracket as a married couple, you would likely qualify for free or nearly free insurance so we won't need to up our budget in that area at this point. This budget also does not include much of our discretionary spending such as travel and home renovations, but it is our essentials budget that we could live on without anything else. The Budget As you can see from the table above, our goal budget is balanced with total income minus expenses equal to zero. Number in red are spending, while black is income. WINS ✔ If you compare this post to the one we did in January, you might notice we added two...

Thriftism's Monthly Budget - January Update - Sams Club Closure Killed the Budget

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As we mentioned at the beginning of January, we are going to post monthly budget updates- So here we are! For a quick reminder, we run our budget off of solely my income of $1200 every two weeks, however this is after insurance is taken out. If this was your total household income, you would gross around $34,000/year and be in the 15% tax bracket. If you were in this tax bracket as a married couple, you would likely qualify for free or nearly free insurance so we won't need to up our budget in that area at this point. This budget also does not include much of our discretionary spending such as travel and home renovations, but it is our essentials budget that we could live on without anything else. The Budget As you can see from the table above, our goal budget is balanced with total income minus expenses equal to zero. Number in red are spending, while black is income. WE FAILED?!?!?! While the January number shows that we did terrible - not even close to an even b...

Thriftism's Monthly Budget

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We have been talking budgets quite a bit lately. The start of a new year brings a bigger budget meeting at our household and since keeping the budget and high levels of savings are on our goals this year, the budget is especially important. This allows us to know where we have available money to spend (for trips, entertainment, house projects, etc.) and helps us track where our money is going. Overall, the budget helps us focus on the things that are important to us - travel, financial security, hobbies - and keep us from spending too much money on items that aren't important to us - eating out, general "stuff". By seeing what we can do with our money, it prevents us from wanting to keep up with the Jones' since we see a better future ahead. Some of our videos mention numbers and many times people do not believe the dollar amount we are throwing out there. For this reason, we decided to start sharing our monthly budgets with you. We will post updates and show that i...