2010 Savings Review Did I Stay Under Budget and Meet My Goals?

For 2010 Our monthly household budget was $400.  This includes all food, clothing, gifts, newspapers, cleaning supplies and home decor.  Considering all the categories that are included in this budget, I think this a modest budget.  From July 10 when I started tracking our spending until Dec. 31, we spent a total of $2664.87.  That’s an average of $444.15. Being $44.15 over budget each month again indicates I will need to adjust our budget to accommodate our new household of 4.

I had no specific goals for money that I would make, as I had no space to set up my music studio to teach and wasn’t sure of the time available for my online pursuits.  My total money made during the same time frame was $1028.61.  This includes online rewards like swagbucks, zoombucks and inbox dollars, rebates and returns, as well as places we sell items like ebay, half.com, craigslist and garage sales.  This total really helped with our overall savings goal.

My goal for savings was $8500.  This amount was equal to the amount we needed to match our income from last year.  The official savings total for July – Dec 2010 was $6896.53, or 81% of the goal.  While it is disappointing, I have to remember that it was too complicated to consider savings from things such as:

• using diapers at night instead of pullups 
• potty training with real underwear instead of pullups 
• substituting less expensive ingredients in recipes 
• $5 dinners instead of easier to fix or more extravagant meals
• simply choosing to not buy the things we want because we know that what we have is sufficient.
• being energy conscious

I could name numerous ways we save that aren’t easy to measure, so I still feel pretty good about our “official” savings.

On to the goals for 2011.  With the addition of Little One last year, our new 2011 household budget is $500 a month, and will include all the same categories as 2010.  I’m decorating a new 4 bedroom house on that budget too mind you!  My plan is to reevaluate the budget in the summer and hopefully we will be able to lower this back down a bit.

Our savings goal for 2011 will be $17,000.  Yes, that’s 17 thousand.  Sound crazy?  Not to me.  As they say the proof is in the pudding.  This is the same per month goal as 2010.  I was able to meet 81% of this goal in 2010, but will now be able to get my music studio up and running in Texas.  I should be able to make the difference, and hopefully more from my studio. I want to save or earn the difference in our 2 wage earnings and our 1 wage earnings.  In order to make this happen, I have to set a goal and keep evaluating my progress monthly in order to achieve that goal.  It’s crucial to my emotional well being to have a goal and see that I’m making progress towards it instead of feeling like I have to “do it all”. 

What budget / savings/ earnings goal did you set for 2011? Please leave a comment and share with us.  Let’s encourage each other in our pursuits this year.