Ben and I were talking today about money. We've been looking over his income from last year as we prepare for taxes and his business is really starting to grow. It's exciting, but it also brings a lot of thoughts with it.
One thing that's frustrating is, with moving and preparing for the new baby, our budget is suddenly higher each month. Our health insurance also went up fifty dollars with the new year, which is really frustrating. We want to keep our budget as low as possible, while we save up for our house, but since we're going to be here for another year, we don't want to live so minimally that it's miserable (which is one reason we're doubling our rent).
Here is a basic break down of our finances:
Ben brings in quite a bit with his business. We're very fortunate and Ben has a talent for marketing, so his business has done really well. He has a few places he gets money:
YouTube Ads: He teaches how to program computer games using an engine called GameMaker and puts out his videos for free. He gets about $300 a month from ads on that.
Patreon: Ben's YouTube channel is linked up with a website called Patreon. It's a place where people who like what you do can donate money monthly to help support you. The idea is their donation helps you keep doing what you're doing. This fluctuates around $400 a month.
GameMaker Book: Around when Ashtyn was born, Ben wrote a book on GameMaker Language and keeps it updated as he feels the need. It still brings in quite a bit of money, adding between $1500 and $2500 a month.
Contract work: Ben is working with a guy named Luke on a video game. He gets paid hourly to do this, in chunks of $1000, and when the game is finished, he'll also get profit sharing. It's been a really good learning experience for him and he has really enjoyed working with Luke.
Udemy: This is our biggest source of income. It's nice, too, because we can usually live off of everything else, so everything he makes from here goes to our house savings (after 30% for taxes). Udemy is a site that hosts online courses. Ben made his first course in July (but didn't get paid for that until September, since they pay two months off) and it has been really successful. It still sells well. We usually get between $4000 and $8,000 from it.
This month Ben just released a new course and it's also done really well. It made this month our best month income-wise half way through the month. After launch month (which is always really high) we expect it to add $1000 to $3000 a month.
We have been able o save a lot for our house. What we do each month is tweek our zero based budget for the month, transfer (from Ben's business account) what we need, calculate what we'll probably need for taxes and save a little extra for that, and then transfer the rest to our house savings.
Here's a basic break down of what a typical monthly budget looks like for us (updated for our new apartment, because we had a really good deal staying with Melissa):
Tithing: We pay ten percent of what we pay ourselves as well as what we put into house savings (since that's paying ourselves as well). We pay ten dollars a month in fast offerings and ten dollars a month to the missionary fund.
Rent: we pay $775 in rent, but it's a three bedroom, so we'll be able to write off the square footage of Ben's office come taxes next year. We also pay gas and electric and I expect those to be between $30 and $60 month.
Car: We budget between $20 and $60 a month for gas, depending on how often we go out to West Jordan to visit my family. We do oil changes twice a year and, of course, registration in the summer, but our car doesn't require too much upkeep thankfully.
New baby: We pay our midwife about $400 a month until May. We also budget to stock up on new baby items, around $20 or $30 a month, and we're budgeting extra in food (between $40 and $60) so I can start making freezer meals. We also budget $50 a month for my supplements while I'm pregnant.
Groceries: This is a big expense, even though I try to keep it down. I usually budget around $20 for nonfoods, things like food bags or toothpaste. I'm trying to move towards using reusable everything and making my own supplies (cleaning, toothpaste, etc).
We budget about $100 a month for Costco, where we buy things like coconut oil, olive oil, and maple syrup. We also buy toilet paper and Tide here (as well as diapers and wipes, but that's under our baby fund).
Our actual grocery bill is between $350 and $450 a month, depending on how many weeks I include in that month's budget. I would really like to bring it down, but we eat a lot of proteins like chicken and Greek yogurt and also buy a lot of produce. Before the month begins, I meal prep for the entire month. I then make a grocery list of exactly what we need and we decide our grocery budget from that. I use a few coupons and always check deals/my price lists of stores before shopping.
Baby: We have a separate budget for Ashtyn (and soon, the new baby). This includes diapers, wipes, baby clothes, baby toys, basically anything I want to buy for Ashtyn. It fluctuates a ton, depending on what we need. Diapers adds $40, wipes adds $20. I usually budget an extra $10 to $20 so I can get what I need when I need it for her.
Insurance: We pay $40 a month for car insurance, for Ben and I combined. For health insurance, I'm still on my parent's (luckily) until I'm too old. For Ben and Ashtyn, we have catastrophe insurance. Anything medical up to $15,000 we pay for it, but everything after that, the insurance pays a hundred percent. We basically have it so that if something horrible were to happen (like cancer), we wouldn't end up with millions in medical bills. We don't go to the doctor pretty much ever and we have enough in savings that if something were to happen (like, if Ashtyn broke her arm), we could pay for it with cash, so this isn't a big deal for us. It's $350 a month for the two of them. It's hard to pay that every month, but we know it's important to have it.
Fun money: We do have Netflix, which is about $10 a month for us. We also pay $15 a month for my phone plan (Ben paid for his phone plan all upfront for a better deal). We budget $50 a month for date night and then we pay ourselves $50 a month each as well, to do whatever we want with. We had actually put a pause on paying ourselves when we moved to Vernal, but when we decided to stay another year, we decided to start it up again.
We expect our total budget to usually come out around $2500. Before, it was between $1500 and $2000. But now we have an apartment and a new baby to prepare for.
We feel really fortunate for our income, Ben's job, my ability to stay home, and Dave Ramsey for helping us learn to budget our money. We feel really confident in our finances and know that we're on the right track things.
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