Budgeting Fail

As I begin this post I let out a big sigh. Recently DH (dear husband) and I decided we need to get our finances in order. He is currently in school and on an army scholarship. Through the scholarship we earn about $2100 a month to live off of and support our family. Well the first year of his four year program flew by.....and so did a lot of our savings. We took a good hard look at our finances and found that we're overspending our monthly income by nearly 1000 a month. Ok, time to roll up our sleeves and start cutting back, right?

Wrong. This month we made a big push to keep our expenses down. Only problem is we have a lot of expenses that we just can't get out of, which leaves very little wiggle room once all the bills are paid. We have 7 days left of this month and we are already over budget by about 500. Gah!!

There are a few explanations for this:

1. Our electricity bill is much higher than average due to the soaring temperatures. It should be much more reasonable next month.

2. We got behind in our tithing payments while we were out of town...and DH decided it was time to catch up. There goes another chunk of money.

3. We found out we're having a baby girl. Which means I can get out of control with "getting ready" for baby expenses. For fun this month we went and made her a Build-A-Bear like we did when we found out we were having DS. We also stocked up on some clothes and diapers that were on sale. I'm hoping the buy now to save later approach works on this one. Luckily we only need a few more items for her and they're pretty inexpensive so this expenditure should go down next month.

4. My birthday is next month. To celebrate DH wanted to go see a Cirque show. He bought the tickets early to get good seats. Not easy on the budget.

5. Lots of various little expenses that we weren't expecting. A bill came through for some lab work I had to have done a few months ago, DS got sick so we had to go stock up on some medicine, etc. I guess we need to plan for these things a little bit better in future.

The good news is is we've saved about $70 on what we usually spend on groceries this month and about $100 on what we spend on eating out. This month I really cracked down on meal planning and DH really cracked down on eating out at school. Hopefully we can carry this over to next month.

We are using Mint.com to keep track of our finances. We've set up all of our budgets for things we have to buy and things that are likely to come up. We  may have failed this month but we've heard it takes a few months to get it down to a science. So far seeing everything on Mint has been really motivating and we're going to keep trying. Wish us luck!!I will have an update with October's results.