With the school year wrapping up, and most of us getting excited for the warmer weather, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we’re going to budget for the, “summer” months. Many of us make a, “holiday budget” for Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year, but how many of us make a budget for “summer?”
Not me! Ironically, I’ve never actually made a budget for “summer”. And I’m not sure why because when I added up what we plan to spend (below) we have just as many summer expenses as we do holiday expenses…they are just spent at a different time of year.
This year we’re not traveling anywhere far from home, or taking any road trips, but we are planning several long weekends at my parent’s lake house, where we’ll be eating and drinking and enjoying each others’ company. So this year, I’m not going to let our summer expenses, “sneak up” on us. They will all be mapped out in Pips, (just kidding) they will be mapped out in whole dollars not Pips, Pips are the foundation of forex trades that traders use to see very small changes in value and make smarter judgments about buying and selling.
Truth be told it’s been a while since I’ve made a budget, so I took at look at some of my prior budgets and came up with the following budget categories
- Birthday Gifts-$?, Exact amount not fully decided on yet (we have 4 summer b-days in the family: hubby, BIL, and two nephews).
- Food-$200, This amount is for “extras” on top of our regular food budget, this includes “grill items” like steak, burgers, chicken, corn, ice cream etc.
- Alcohol-$100, Beer and wine aren’t cheap, but we’ll be watching the flyers for sales.
- BBQ gas-$100, Hubby is super excited to grill this summer, now that we’re living in the country (post about our big move coming soon).
- Fireworks-$25, Actual fireworks scare me, so this is really just a, “sparklers” budget-wink.
- County Fair-$100, Admission and food. Man that fair food is expensive! But hubby must have a bacon wrapped hotdog and French fries cooked in lard (and thankfully, for his arteries, the fair only happens once a year)
- Gas-$100, Additional gas we’ll use driving to my parents’ house to spend time with them at their lake house-blessed!
I guess I’ve never really given much thought about the way we spend over the summer, because summer is more relaxed and there aren’t any major spending holidays (like Christmas).
Typically, I’d just add these expenses into my regular monthly budget. But when I sat down and added it all up, I’m actually surprised by how much we’re actually planning to spend.
$625 (not including the birthday gifts) isn’t a small amount of money to cash flow over 3 months. So planning for our additional expenses and budgeting them in advance so we don’t have to worry about overspending.
Do you make a summer budget? What do you include? What am I missing?