With all the writing at work and for NaNoWriMo, I'm using a small window of downtime to fool around with numbers for a change.

I don't really work on a monthly budget anymore; I do an annual budget with real dates of predicted income and expenses. I do break it out by month, but some months have 5 weekends of grocery shopping, some have no haircut appointment, some have birthday or Xmas gift line items...you get the idea. Also, I don't factor AS's money in until she gets paid. So the surplus varies and I don't have a sense of how much my budget works out to monthly.

I do have an "emergency budget" amount figured out, but it's skewed because it assumes no daycare (if we were all out of work someone would stay home with the kids), and a tiny grocery budget, but does assume we all need to buy bus passes and healthcare out of pocket.

So I did a workup of an average month, with four weekends and no one-time events like Xmas. Then I factored in my and NT's take-home pay. I was pleased to see that even without AS's freelance income, we have over $1000 surplus:

Daycare (minus flex spending reimburse) -$668.34
Mortgage ($2789.40 -$1074 rental income) -$1,715.40
Utilities (est) -$400.00
Spending money -$120.00
Groceries -$200.00
Spending money -$120.00
Groceries -$200.00
AS dental -$27.95
Roth IRAs -$1,375.00
Spending money -$120.00
Groceries -$200.00
Spending money -$120.00
Groceries -$200.00
Barber -$100.00
Cell phones -$50.43
AS healthcare -$71.00
Carshare -$90.00
Bus pass -$85.00
---------------------------
Total expenses -$5,863.12


CJ paycheck x2 $3,344.12
NT paycheck x2 $3,579.46
--------------------------
Total net income $6,923.58

Budget surplus $1,060.46

Then I wondered, what would a bare bones budget (but not emergency where we'd need to cover our own healthcare and bus passes) look like relative to our budget? The last time we had a real bare-bones budget, our expenses were much higher because we hadn't refinanced or paid off all our non-mortgage debt. So I figured that out as well:

Daycare (minus flex spending reimburse) -$668.34
Mortgage ($2789.40 -$1074 rental income) -$1,715.40
Utilities (est) -$400.00
Groceries -$150.00
Groceries -$150.00
AS dental -$27.95
Groceries -$150.00
Groceries -$150.00
Barber (just NT, me every other month) -$30.00
Cell phones -$50.43
AS healthcare -$71.00
Bus pass -$85.00
---------------------------
Total expenses -$3,648.12

CJ paycheck x2 $3,344.12
NT paycheck x2 $3,579.46
----------------------------
Total net income $6,923.58

Budget surplus $3,275.46

Essentially, we're very close to being able to get by only using one income if need be! That is super cool to look at. This budget wouldn't be very fun, since it cuts grocery spending and omits fun money and carshare spending, but it would keep us alive, fed and sheltered.

That was a fun exercise. Now back to working with words.