budget – Page 3 – little money bee

goals, military life, our budget, our life

budgeting – don’t forget the annual & infrequent expenses

April 5, 2017 No Comments

This seems like a silly post to write, but when budgeting, it’s really easy to give yourself exactly enough to spend and pay your bills, and forget about something major coming up. I’ve finally gotten to a point where I’m putting money away for all these so they don’t sneak up on me and ruin a month. It’s also a good reminder that these are things you may not see if you are budgeting based off 1-2 months of your last statements. Car registration. Duh. Yeah, this gets paid every year (or two years, depending on where you are). Our […]

goals, our budget, our life, retirement accounts

March Recap / April Goals

April 2, 2017 2 Comments

Well if I thought February flew by, I definitely wasn’t prepared for March. The Bee family financial goals in March were: Find a way to share our budget more effectively. Hmm. I don’t think I did well on this. I actually liked last month’s format, and I might keep it. When I write a full-on budget post, I think I’ll share all of our categories, but to be honest, a lot of them just collect money and go up until they get used, like car registration or our renter’s insurance. Reduce restaurant spending to under $300. Holy guacamole, am I […]

budget, goals, military life, our life

the most important start – an emergency fund

March 27, 2017 No Comments

I know not everyone is aiming for early retirement, and that’s totally understandable. However, I have one suggestion that everyone should be working toward regardless of where you are in your financial life: an emergency fund. The amount of your emergency fund may vary based on your life circumstances. Conventional budgeting suggests that you maintain 3 months income (or 3 months of your expenses) as your emergency fund in case of job loss. However, as an enlisted military family, it seems very unlikely that Eric would lose his job unexpectedly at no fault of his own, so we can reasonably […]

frugal, goals, meal plan, military life, our budget, our life, recipes I love

reducing expenses – groceries

March 19, 2017 No Comments

Good morning, moneybees! I received a message from a friend that stated that she loved the blog, but she was having a hard time keeping her grocery expenses low. As I’ve mentioned, the Bee family grocery budget is about $400/month, occasionally over that, and she stated hers was about $600 per month (or $300 every pay period). She asked how we keep our grocery expenses low and if I could share some tips. I’d love to! Some of the biggest influences in my success in sticking to a grocery budget: Shop weekly and meal plan. I’ve been using Plan to […]

goals, our budget, our life

mid-month budget update

March 15, 2017 No Comments

I don’t plan to do this all the time, but I just wanted to give a quick update as to where we are in our budget in the middle of the month. I use YNAB (You Need A Budget), which is really great, but when looking back at past months, it’s hard to see how I was doing in the middle of the month. Am I living like a prince in the first half of the month and like a pauper the rest of the month because my categories are empty? So here’s how we’re doing in the middle of […]