This post, every year is my most visited post and as such, I receive several questions about various components of our one-income budget so I wanted to take a moment to answer a few of those more commonly asked questions.
What about this? What about that?
This is our “go-by” monthly budget, which means that usually this is our budget but it does change when it needs to. For example, whenever we have birthday parties to attend, we’d have to add in gifts to our budget and lower the amount in other categories. Same goes for our gas (heating bill) and power bills, they will change depending on the season.
Please don’t think that this budget never changes because it does. This just keeps us from having to re-invent the wheel every month. We use cash for our everyday purchases – including groceries so sometimes we spend less on things whenever we still have cash left over in those envelopes. (For more on the cash envelope system and how you can start it, visit this post here.)
Tithe
Last year, we didn’t have tithing included in our budget because my husband wanted us to have my students loans paid off before we started tithing. Now that we’re tithing again, you’ll see that it’s not 10% as is common for tithing and this is because this is the amount that my husband and I agreed to. I know many don’t agree with this, but please know that this is what works for our household and what works for your household will be different.
You can read how we paid off $5,000 of debt in one month here.
Cigarettes
I wrote an in-depth post about why cigarettes are included in our budget that you can read here. My husband is a smoker so cigarettes are included because without including them, our budget would be wrecked every month.
Clothing
We typically don’t include clothing in our budget because I score the majority of our clothing for free from consignment shops like ThredUP. But as mentioned above this monthly budget that I share here is our “go-by” budget so it does change month to month and sometimes, we do include clothing in our budget, especially for back-to-school. For more on how we stretch our clothing budget, visit this post here.
Groceries
We got our grocery budget down to a $100 week last year before the boys started school and Charlotte was born. Now our grocery budget varies from $150 – $200 a week depending upon if one of our boys is in charge of their class’ snack for that week. We do order our diapers from The Honest Company for Charlotte but since Collin is still in diapers (I swear potty training will be the death of me…) we purchase his diapers at Kroger since we don’t have to purchase them very often. So, they’re included in our grocery budget along with Charlotte’s formula.
Other Budget Items
You’ll see under our One-Income Budget that I have Expenses Outside the Budget listed. These expenses are funded by our side hustles which include my blog earnings (if you’re interested in how much I earn from the blog, I share my blog income in my Grow Your Blog Newsletter that you can sign up here for).
You’ll also see that I have Yearly Expenses listed. These are expenses that happen once a year. If your state has Ad Valorem Tax (a.k.a. the birthday tax) you already know what that is but in case your state doesn’t have it, Georgia used to have a tax that when you purchased a vehicle you had to pay the Ad Valorem tax on it every year in your birthday month. Now, they’ve included this tax with the purchase price of your vehicle so you only have to pay the tag registration fee for the year in your birthday month. Since my car was purchased after the new law we already paid the Ad Valorem on it but my husband’s truck was purchased years before the law and so we still have to pay the tax every year plus the registration.
Related Post: How to Save a $1,000 in a Month
Little Note About Expenses
Some of the expenses that come out of our budget are just for me – what I mean is that my husband’s company pays for his cell phone bill and his gas so those expenses are not included in our budget. Only my cell phone (I use Republic Wireless) and my gas for my car are included.
Income
You’ll notice that I don’t include my husband’s 401(k) contributions, health insurance premiums, my husband’s life insurance costs, and taxes because those all come out his paycheck before we see it. This makes budgeting for our one-income budget easier for me, but of course, a budget is unique to each household so you may want to include them in yours. There’s no wrong way to do it.
Christmas Fund
If you want to have a debt-free Christmas, you have to plan for it! We keep Christmas in our budget because well, it falls on the same day of the same year every single year. So, it’s not a surprise and as such it’s a part of our budget.
Read more about how to make a debt-free Christmas possible here.
Conner’s Commission
You’ll see that our oldest son is earning commission now. He doesn’t earn the full $28 a month yet because he’s 4 and he’s still learning how to do chores and learning the concept of money but we keep it in the budget at the full allowed amount just in case he picks up on how much money he could earn. 🙂 This amount will change in August when Collin turns 3 because he’ll be allowed to start earning commission then as well. (We’re using Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace Jr for our kids.)
Okay, so that’s the commonly asked questions but of course, if the above doesn’t answer your question, feel free to comment below and I’ll answer the best way that I can.
Our One-Income Budget
| Income: | $3,745.50 |
| Mortgage: | $740.00 |
| Tithe: | $200.00 |
| Auto Insurance: | $111.00 |
| Auto Account | $300.00 |
| Groceries: | $675.00 |
| Emergency Fund | $120.00 |
| Jessi’s Retirement | $40.00 |
| Additional Mortgage/EF Pmt: | $123.00 |
| Netflix: | $8.00 |
| Gas: | $60.00 |
| Power: | $150.00 |
| Fuel: | $50.00 |
| Water: | $40.00 |
| Cooks (This is for termite protection): | $21.67 |
| Trash: | $19.67 |
| AT&T: | $50.00 |
| Cell Phone: | $38.00 |
| Diapers/Wipes | $85.00 |
| Vacation Fund | $200.00 |
| Regular Doctor Appt | $35.00 |
| Pat’s Misc Money | $240.00 |
| Medicine | $50.00 |
| Pat’s Cigs | $120.00 |
| Conner’s Commission | $28.00 |
| Misc | $138.00 |
| Project Fund | $60.00 |
| Christmas Fund | $40.00 |
Yearly Expenses
| Life Insurance (Jessi): Paid in Jan | $99.00 |
| Ad Valorem: Paid in April | $200.00 |
| Amazon Prime: Paid in October | $99.00 |
Expenses Outside Our Budget
| Boys’ Preschool | $427.50 |
Other Posts You May Enjoy:
How to lower your grocery bill without using coupons
How to financially prepare to become a stay-at-home mom
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Jessi, you’re so gracious to openly share so much information about your family’s finances – thank you!
I love that you do this every year! It’s so incredibly inspiring! Thank you for being so open with your readers!
Is the boys preschool listed at weekly or monthly? I’m ready to go back but it’s not financially worth it until my youngest goes to pre k … In two and a half years. I’m so ready to contribute financially but the cost of daycare/aftercare makes it pointless for us.
*go back to work.
It’s monthly. We love their preschool – it’s with our church so they are getting to hang out with their friends from Mass at school and love it. 🙂
We do church preschool too and love it!
Thanks for sharing your numbers so openly, Jessi.
Okay so this may sound like like a *how does she not already know this question* haha but how does your family save / budget for the yearly expenses? Personally I try to account for everything on a monthly basis whether I actually pay it monthly or if it’s annually or semi-annually and just stash the money to the side monthly with the idea that it is “spoken for” until the due date comes. Do you do something similar or do you use the extra money that you have left over from your monthly expenses and know you will have enough? I hope this makes sense…
Thanks!
Back before we were married, I always set aside the money ever month for yearly expenses but once we were married that became more of a challenge since it wasn’t just me spending/saving money anymore. So now I just put those expenses in the budget for that month and just take money from another area of the budget like our mortgage/extra EF payment line item.
Do you ever resent it that your husband has $420 budgeted to him every month, that you don’t get budgeted to you? If so, how do you deal with that? (I’m not asking to be rude, although I know it sounds like a rude question; it’s just that I would resent the crap out of my husband if he got fun money, cigarette money, and project money, and I got diddly.)
Not a rude question at all Becca! 🙂 I’m not a spender – I’m so much happier seeing money in savings than spending it so most of the time I’m completely not bothered by it. In fact, my saving money has led to more arguments than my husband’s spending. lol And usually if I want to spend money, I’ll take pay from the blog earnings or use my Christmas or birthday money.
I am embarrassed I had no idea what tithing was and had to look it up!
Thank you for openly sharing your budget on the blog! Your mention of how your grocery bill fluctuates depending on whether your kids have snack responsibility triggered a memory for me. i remember in childhood rec soccer, how each week a different set of parents was responsible for bringing the drinks and oranges for the kids. The parents with more money would bring gatorades whereas the rest of the parents would bring cheaper drinks. It seems kind of unnecessary spending now and I probably wouldn’t even want my kids to drink the sugary drinks that we drank back in the day. Do you see obligatory social spending on kids happen alot and is it hard when you’re trying to be frugal and the other parents might not care as much?
Thankfully our boys’ school only wants healthy snacks — they provide water for the kids to drink and will only accept juice if it’s your child’s bday. So, we don’t have to purchase junk food but it’s definitely a challenge having to purchase enough snacks for several kids over the course of a week. I usually bring in graham crackers, grapes, and pretzels — I’m totally not a Pinterest mom. lol.
I really enjoyed seeing an honest budget similar to my income. How you broke it down looks great. Thank you for sharing!!!
It’s always interesting to see other people’s budgets 🙂 So great that you guys have no debt and are tithing and saving for retirement! I think it’s great encouragement to many people.
Is the Above budget for one month? I have twins and a 3 year old.
Yes ma’am – it’s a typical month but it definitely has to change sometimes.
This might be a silly question but the money you have budgeted for things like Pat’s misc money, Christmas, project, and vacation money do you actually pull it out of your account or do you leave it in and not touch it? Your blog is very inspirational to get our finances and butts on the right track. Haha thank you!
Hi Tanya! We actually pull the money out – we have several different accounts (savings and checking accounts) that we use for various things. It keeps us from spending the money that we’ve marked for certain things.
I’m always excited when I see families getting out of debt and advertising that they did it on one income…but with your numbers here, it just does not add up that you could possibly pay off $55k in debt in 2 years. Unless you were basically mooching off someone else during that time and had no bills of your own.
Hi Sarah! I’m sorry darlin’ that you feel misled – but yes, we did pay off $55K on one-income which included us getting rid of a car. So yes, technically we didn’t pay that off – we got rid of it so you are correct that is misleading which was not my intention and I apologize for misleading you. We took my blog earnings to apply extra to mortgage – along with tax refund checks and bonus checks so no, that was not included in this budget because we don’t use blog earnings or bonus income for the household budget. So these numbers were correct for 2016. I hope this clarifies your concern Sarah!
Thanks Jessi. I understand what you’re saying, but the point is that you can’t claim you used this single-income budget when you actually had thousands and thousands above that in additional income. (tax refund, bonus checks, blog income, etc.). It’s still great that you did it, but you obviously didn’t do it on *just* the income reported here. And yes, an $18k head start with the tahoe trade-in helped a lot I’m sure, even though you said it was hard for you to part with. It’s awesome that you were disciplined enough to do that!
This income was after we had paid off the debt (we paid it off in 2015) so the numbers were different. My blog didn’t start earning enough income to even be claimed for the IRS until 2015 so it was a side hustle until then, not income for the household. But I do understand your point Sarah and I am sorry that you feel you’ve been mislead. That is never my intention and why I do share on my site different ways that we made paying off this debt a reality. I didn’t mean to say that we became debt-free without getting out and hustling because yes, we did have to hustle. We’re right, we would not have been able to pay off the debt in two years without the hustle.
I am following you religiously. I love your blog.
Budgeting has been very daunting to me, I must confess. Our income doesn’t just cut it and my hubby isn’t into it at all.I have tried and I will keep trying but can I start in July when the year is already half way gone?
I appreciate you sharing your budget so openly, it’s amazing.
Meanwhile, while I think it’s great that you respect the Word of God on tithing, I think it would make more sense even to God if you just called what you gave an offering rather than a tithe. Tithe is 10% so if you’re not giving 10%, I don’t think it’s still tithe. You can just call it an offering and when you feel it’s time to do the 10% which I hope is soon, then you can call it tithe.
I do have a lot to learn from you so I am staying right here!
Hi Kiki! Yes, you absolutely can and should start budgeting as soon as possible! 🙂 And my husband took forever to get on board with budgeting so it will take awhile probably to convince him but keep approaching him about and discussing future goals with him and how if you put xyz in the budget to save for this or that goal you could reach it by x date will sometimes help convince a reluctant spouse to be open to budgeting. I hope this helps darlin’!
I do have a question because I did not see it in your budget- you have an auto expense, but I don’t see gasoline anywhere on there- is that $300 for that AND replacement, or just replacement?
I put your budget side by side with our current one to see where we could tweak since we have a similar income but don’t seem to save well.
Hi Michelle! Gasoline is listed under “fuel”. The $300 is mostly used for maintenance but if need be, we’d definitely pull from this account to help pay for the replacement cost of a vehicle. I hope this helps darlin’!
Not a question, but I love following you! Thank you for your transparency! My husband and I are in the process of becoming debt free and your posts are encouraging! Also, just a tip – I saw you said you buy your diapers at Kroger…I buy for my son on amazon prime and have found that is the absolute cheapest place I’ve found for the price per diaper (unless you’re an extreme couponer. I wish I was!) Thanks again for all of your suggestions and your example!
You are way too kind to me Katy! And congratulations to you and your husband on jumping on the debt-free bandwagon! 🙂 🙂 🙂