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Home > Archive: August, 2018

Archive for August, 2018

Handling our monthly surplus income

August 21st, 2018 at 07:12 pm

August is the first full month that we have the surplus income I've posted about before. I thought it would be a little higher but based on my last paycheck and an updated YTD spending review, it looks like we're running a $3,000 surplus. So I'm sticking with my plan to send $1,000 to savings, $1,000 to the mortgage, and $1,000 to a taxable-but-earmarked-for-retirement investment account. I've already done the first two this month and just need to do the retirement piece.

We'll actually end up with a larger surplus this month but only because it's a 3 paycheck month which only happens twice a year.

We did make some more expensive than usual travel arrangements in the past month so our YTD spending numbers are skewed a bit by that. I think it will average out to be a little lower by a few hundred dollars by the end of the year, making our actual surplus a little higher. Also, work still hasn't finalized our new contracts so I haven't started receiving my raise yet. It will be paid retroactively to July 1 and once it starts, I should be taking home about $400/month more than I am now, so that will boost the surplus also.

We do have a few bigger ticket purchases on the horizon. We need a new desktop computer. Ours is actually over 8 years old, which is ancient as computers go. We never really bought our daughter a college graduation present. She wants a new computer as well. Hers is good, and will probably pass down to my wife, but she has really gotten into video editing and her computer isn't the best for that. So DW and I were talking about at least paying for part of that if not all of it.