February was a quick month, as it always is. Normally I’d expect it would be an average or below average month for income. This February turned out to be one of our higher income months and it wasn’t even a “3 paycheck†month for us.
A combination of factors helped boost our income this month and helped us add a solid $5500 to our savings account in February. The first factor was the blog. There were a few renewals as well as some new business. I book the entire prepaid amount for advertising in the month that I receive payment (as opposed to averaging it across the subscription period), so I saw a bit of a spike in the blog income in February.
The second contributor was my annual bonus at work. It wasn’t as large as it has been in the past but it was better than zero and definitely helped increase our income for the month.
Along with the extra income, we also locked down our spending more than we have in quite awhile. As I reviewed our Mint.com spending summary for February I was happy to see that we only exceeded our budgeted spending by a few hundred dollars. That’s mostly my fault because I bought a new audio receiver from Newegg.com that was ridiculously priced (low). No regrets. The other area that we were over budget on was our food/dining. Not a big surprise. We usually overrun this, although we are trying to do better at it.
Needless to say, I’m happy with how the month turned out from a budget perspective. I’m also fairly optimistic about the rest of the year as we don’t anticipate any major expenses this year. Luckily most of the big expenses are out of the way for the foreseeable future. We shouldn’t need a car for the next 5+ years, we have a new roof and new siding on the house, and the lake house construction is basically complete. Sure, we could probably come up with a few ideas on how to blow a bunch of money, but the overall theme at our house this year is going to be SAVING! If we are able to control our spending we should be able to double our savings through 2010. With the potential instability with my employment next year, frankly, the more we save, the better.
Sweet! Seems like you did have a great month. Keep that up for the rest of the year and you’ll be set for awhile. Once those big expenses do come up or you lose your job, you’ll be ready to handle them without stressing out about it.