Two Things I DIDN'T Plan for

Normally, I dread organizing our taxes for our accountant, but this year I didn’t mind. Since I’m doing a year of no shopping, it gave me a great opportunity to recap my habits over the year.  

This is a GREAT exercise and I encourage you to try it if you haven’t. It brought to light a couple of areas that I have a tendency to NOT plan for in my budget.

#1. Haircuts

You’d think I’d plan for this because I get my haircut religiously every 4-5 weeks. But I realized, I don’t bake that into our budget and you probably know...haircuts aren’t really that cheap. They can make a dent for sure in your bank account.

#2. Vitamins

Ya’ll...I’m in the wrong business! Oh LAWD!  I would love to preach that I eat a balanced enough diet to not need vitamins, but that just isn’t the case.  I eat a great diet, but because of some hormone issues and impacts of my thyroid medicine, I’ve needed to take a few supplements. Totally worth it...I should just plan better for it.

I mean, these don’t sound major but combined, that money would have made a good bump in the vacation fund and that means it was enough that we need to plan for it. While you’re at it, make sure you have some goals tied to that budget!  You can read more about that here: Three reasons your budget needs a goal.

Use tax time as an opportunity to make some adjustments for the remainder of the year. REMEMBER: Use the information to fuel change instead of fuel regret. Knowledge is power!

Craving more?  I recently worked with Emily to help her kick her finances into gear. You can read about the 5 tips she used to save $1k per month here in Reader's Digest.  I provided the tips, she did the badass work! 

Have a great week!
Livin’ & Lovin’

B