Budgeting Catch-Up & A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!! | October 2024 Beers & Budgeting

we told you we would be back welcome back see you did it see you did it you're like and we're back what's up who's this person back here the main host no one cares we just got done talking off off camera that I have a habit of Leaning forward cuz I want to talk to you I don't want to talk to him and said they want to see me not you but go ahead no I'm good they want to see you honestly they do trust me I do not need to get closer in on cameras okay all right well stick around October we're here we're doing it we're drinking you're drinking I'm drinking coffee let's do it I feel like I don't we don't need to introduce ourselves but I'm your host Justine this is my husband Kyle what's [Music] up we're going to go over October's budget what are you drinking same beer I did last video because we're behind on our budgets still the Buffalo Sweat Stout still tasty still cold cuz the last video was quick um why didn't we do the budget two months in a row oh yeah I forgot because I've been working nonstop on house projects and other projects I feel like this is already going to be a longer video so the previous owners well the original owners put in this big retaining wall in our backyard and it has this really cool natural Limestone shelf on it that's part of the Hill that we live on so it's a kind of a neat backyard but on top of this Limestone platform they built a deck well they put in the footings and the joist and they back filled it with dirt and then put the the decking boards on top the dirt wed away the entire deck so it was kind of a hazard to walk on and so my buddy came down we took the top off didn't un unbeknownst to us there was a bunch of dirt and that's why it had rotted away so I took everything out and then I was like I've got to remove the dirt no matter what so I got a dumpster in our driveway and me your dad and my cousin over several weeks uh moved 11 tons of dirt by shovel and wheelbarrow very slowly and painfully so that took up a ton of time and then and like the day that that project ended started working on my office and doing Framing and well I did demo and then Framing and getting in the attic to run new electrical and all this other stuff so I've spent all of my free time trying to get our house situated to a point point where we can feel like we don't have major projects anymore once the baby comes mhm and now it will just kind of hopefully be smaller things of like hey hang this picture here and it's like oh I can do that it takes 10 minutes rather than an entire week or month or whatever so that's why you haven't seen us doing budgets cuz I've been outside shoveling dirt shoveling dirt that that's one of two major projects in one of three major I guess purchases that we've done over the last 30 45 days I'll say that do you okay should I just go ahead and open up the October budget and then we'll okay so we planned on we'll just go over here zoom in on the summary table we planned on a $112,000 income month we had $4,495 actually come in because this was an extra paycheck month are you sure it was that I also got paid out for my overtime you did so either way we got extra cash from my job yes okay we sure did so that left us I love this in the upper left hand corner the money left over so it's like not hidden boom money left 3,300 by the way we're still using the super budget template that has been recently created for you you can also get this super budget template for sale using my link in the description box below this is souped up it's got all the sheets I've got the financial inventory I have a guide with step-by-step instructions I recently created a tutorial video walking you through how to use all of these sheets how to add and delete rows a yearly glance tab showing a breakdown in the pie charts you get two different budget templates to start if you're brand new to budgeting the simple template is where I would start and then if you're you know kind of getting into it you want a little bit more visual super template is where it's at plus you get all the debt trackers for student loans credit cards uh your car loan and savings trackers and each one comes with a different card where you can track month over month how much you've saved how much interest you've earned or credit cards a for each credit card debt how much you've paid off how much interest you've paid down it's Killa it's Killa and it's for sale buy once use it for life that is what we're using for the October budget here let's go up at the top to the checklists events and notes and we'll work our way down does that sound good from the top from the top we bought a car hey guys we bought a car we didn't share that in the last episode cuz it didn't happen in the last episode did we buy the Toyota Highlander no did we buy a minivan no no we didn't you guys are never going to guess what we bought and I cannot wait to see you guys eat us up in the comments about this one yeah I know don't get it stolen don't get it stolen can you guess uh we bought Kia tell ride a 2021 Kia tell you ride we bought the premium trim line the SX and we were pleasantly surprised the Toyota Highlander Hybrid premium that we were test driving at CarMax by the way this purchase was from CarMax we did that intentionally because we hate dealing with dealerships we bought our Subaru from a dealership and it was the worst experience you guys probably know dealerships not good so the Highlander that we actually test drove from carax was kind of junky it was it was it had been used and abused and hung up wet so it and I don't know it say just cuz they didn't clean it but there were just some things wrong and we had to go back and forth like we waited a week and a half for them just to get the title so we could take it for a test drive and then we had to wait for them to do the repairs that we spoke pointed out but they didn't do them all and then when they did do them they didn't do them the way that we thought they should have been done and I don't know it was a nice car it was great and it was a little bit over budget it was like 5 six grand over what we had saved for but it was a hybrid so you got the better gas mileage supposedly we loved how it it drove we loved the interior we loved all the premium features the biggest things where I said I have to walk away from this is there was a rust spot Exposed on the exterior there were several uh Dent well not dents but paint chips yeah like aggressive paint chips like they didn't scrape a car but they definitely got hit with something that rocks or not sure not sure it's a pearl white kind of that glittery pearl white paint color and it looked like they literally used white out to on the paint chip marks they didn't even like make it like try to push it down flat they just like caked it on there like you would like ice icing on a cupcake it was just like what I was like this that wasn't CarMax that was the I guess the original owners I don't know you would assume bunch of scratches on the rear bumper and then the passenger door part of the actual like panel of the door the metal panel was like chopped yeah cracked I don't know like some kid may have swung it out into a rock or something or a fire hydrant and I mean that thing was completely busted anyway so we passed on that so we passed on that they happened to have this key to tell you right in the lot Justine was interested in driving it so she drove it and I drove it and here we are we liked it we really liked it we did our research I have a consumer report subscription I went on to Google I was very thorough in okay what are the major mechanical issues with AA that we need to know about uh what are some common problems people encounter we know about the Kia boys the Kia boys that go in and steal older U years of older Kia there used to be a trick with the USB connector but there's been a software updates that's not really a thing anymore so I wished you know the Toyota is what I really really wanted the Kia is pretty freaking nice it has more features than the Highlander did yeah the I do wish it was hybrid but at the same time if if you were comparing a regular Toyota Highlander to the Hybrid Toyota Highlander and you're looking at the price difference and how far you'd have to drive that car to get the gas mileage back out of it we would have had to drive the car in one well in one scenario we would have had to drive the car almost 115,000 miles before we broke even MH the hybrid alone is like 5 to 7K more just because it's a hybrid and that's a lot of gallons of gas that you can buy for5 to $7,000 more so from a financial perspective what's that what's that makeup what's that difference what's that cost so at the end of the day I don't know I don't think it would have been worth it just from it been peace of mind or if you're an environmentally conscious person or whatever justify it on your own means or whatever in your own way the the tell you right is really going to be our road trip car in anytime where we do need a second vehicle the Forester is what we are primarily using to drop Quinn off to preschool run around town that sort of thing because it it's just way better gas mileage than the Kia so Kia out the door how much did we spend did I note it here oh I did not that's why because I drained the car number two fund oh gosh we have $770 left in there yeah that's awesome that means we were on budget we been plan tell them the story we planned to buy the second car we did all that stuff yeah we put 500 bucks aside per month for years yeah and then when it got to like 40K we said let's stop we had it in a high yield savings bond it grew to 45 mhm just from the Savings in it and we used that and we wiped the whole thing out and that includes tax title and license and we were within budget yes and someone like me that's very calming it is very calming because the Highlander out the door was 51 K that included um registration and title CarMax will take care of that for you FYI super amazing amazing they're doing that for the tell you ride as we speak so with the the tell you ride was listed at 39,000 it has about just over 31,000 miles on it and out the door including title taxes registration all that good stuff uh we transferred over 43,000 we added Max care which is carmax's like insurance basically you know it 100,000 miles or 5 Years bring it back for all of these reasons and we'll take care of it for you display goes bad car won't the car seat won't move back and forth anyways so all of that was dumped over to CarMax and so now that has been drained we've drained the home the down payment home upgrades we've drained car number two fund guess what has not been drained is our emergency fund we don't touch that so that's great that is taken care of okay so that's car talk yeah so now you bring it up I don't even know how much we have in our emergency fund we have close to $40,000 in our emergency fund okay good it was 30 with interest and just letting it ride we've got close to 40 that's something we probably need to take a look at again now that we have all these extra expenses because now we're going to have to add more to the car insurance syncing fund so it was 378 to ensure the tell you ride for 6 months we just paid a six-month premium which I thought was great yeah really great but let's let's move on cuz we've got we've got more stuff to share uh work trip work conference oh yeah so October was going to be even more hectic because I had a conference you had conference back to back and we both said you know what one I was not feeling physically capable to keep up with the demands of a conference schedule I can't even hardly walk a mile without like like trick-or-treating yeah I was like oh my gosh Tri Tre was a great time but it was so fun but man oh man I walked too much and then your conference you're like okay how can I really spend my time and be still productive at work still productive at home is this year my year to to do this conference cuz it's a conference we both attend regularly it's kind of our annual conferences yeah so we canceled that and I feel like mentally that was just so nice to get off my plate agreed agreed we had lots of birthdays um for October lots of birthdays on both sides of our families including my birthday so that was fun we had a chill birthday for my birthday it was great we did a brewery with p Pizza I asked my mom to make me a chocolate cake with sprinkles rainbow sprinkles then my sister was like what kind of rainbow sprinkles cuz there's different kinds I'm like the crunchy kind the little like rainbow balls and she did C come through yeah that was that was awesome what else let's go through our expenses again preschool was 1120 I feel like maybe I just planned on oh plus 55 that's right this is for gymnastics that's why I included that okay but I think what I meant to do was include it down here with Quinn money yeah I did so I counted it twice let's take this off and then I had it on here five times is that right did we have five Mondays in October nope we only had four mind blown okay electricity natural gas together $246 on util ities for that I went ahead and just earmarked $147 for water based off of what we paid last month actually you know what this is not right this should be half of that yeah cuz we're paying it every other month but we also tried to grow that grass and I had that I forgot about that this was this was not good this is this is one of those things that put me over the edge like I almost want to call the previous owners and be like so we have the sprinkler system that I think is original with the house and they didn't do anything with it I've had it on the setting and it never is has never run and then I get up in the morning one day on a Friday and I hear water running and I go out and I check the sprinkler and it had said that it had been running for six hours and I was like what so come to find out that it's like one r the way it's programmed it's like one random Friday a month it decides to water the yard but the default time length for watering your yard is set at 6 hours per Zone and I'm like first off what manufacturer has the default setting at 6 hours like the default setting should be zero minutes why would why would I'm beside myself on that because I wasted so much water and I hate wasting water I hate Lawns to begin with yeah and these the reason we were even looking at watering is cuz we had found the the previous owners had left a bag of grass seed and was like hey go you know you know like here's a bag of grass seed I think that grass seed was probably from the owners before them eight years ago because nothing grew and it was probably a bunch of bag of dead seeds yeah it was dead like nothing sprad nothing not a not anything nothing sprouted and I just beside myself on at all just I'm over it I'm over the sprinkler system I'm over the lawn like the back dirt project and just I'm over all of it get this when I actually went and replaced the furnace filter two people were at fault on how bad that looked first it was our inspector cuz I am like when we walked through this house if he had pulled the furnace filter out he would have taken a picture of it and shown it to me cuz it looked like they hadn't replaced it in like at 3 or 4 years I mean it there was so much dirt on top of the filter that you couldn't actually see the filter like it was that kicked on that thick that dirty and the other person that's at fault is the previous owners like how are you an adult and not knowing to replace your furnace filter anyways luckily you knew I need to need to calm down take another drink uh luckily you knew we got new filters replaced them you did a lot of cleaning you did a lot of cleaning my dad came down um my dad has worked 40 plus years in the HVAC industry he immediately went down into the furnace room and he's like that's not right that's not right that's a hazard yeah and then we have a tankless water heater but the gas vent on top the vent kind of did this goose neck thing and initially the goose neck was full of water so you couldn't even vent gas out of it out of the house mhm so we we said we wanted to replace it they had paid someone to replace it and did it wrong because then the air vent filter was off-kilter it wasn't sitting flush it was sitting open cuz I would go down there and I'm like it smells like gas down here sure enough it was leaking it it still couldn't get that right and I just so dad fixed that he tested he did a whole test run of the furnace to make sure there was no leaks and he did warn us he's like if if the carbon monoxide detector goes off or find any leaks this is toast complete replacement luckily it's not he's like it's up and running like amazing but we probably have another year maybe two until we need to replace it so that's something that we need to actively save for luckily dad can get us you know a at Cost replacement basically we're so grateful we're so grateful okay I love ownership I love home ownership it's been a bit of a house hazing we really have missed La in San Diego we're like wow we had so much free time we get it now yep um I still love it no regrets I still like the house yeah we're still in this transition phase I mean truly we got to be easy on ourselves July I mean we've only been here four four months I know anyways back to the budget that's enough soap box I'll try to keep it clean for the rest of the episode kids well no promises this is it you what happened to the grocery budget you keep venting they keep clicking I keep making okay that's how that works what happened to the grocery budget oh my see I telling you every other month $839 and I was kind of trying to figure out exactly where that came from so down here at the bottom when you fill out the super budget template you have to fill in all of your transactions using the daily expense tracker don't fill it up up here in fact don't mess with any of these gray cells or else you're going to mess with the formulas so what I did is I ended up using these check boxes to highlight all the times that we went to a grocery store or something that was categorized as getting something groceries uh liquor alcohol and all these kind of like smaller runs down here where it was like oh Target we picked up milk uh Walmart you picked up milk we went and grabbed more alcohol at one point so it was like some of these little things were adding up but the biggest one was this $446 expense from Costco and that I double checked that receipt it was mainly grow like that was all groceries and I think one box of pull-ups okay pullups pups our daughter says pool like like a swimming pool she calls them pups pups pups it's pretty cute we were right on budget pretty much 7 $73 over for Home Improvement and repairs lots of more trips to to Home Depot in fact if I can see where that was the furnace in hot water heater fix yep that was the fix so that was a that was half of it and the rest of it was like home Depot stuff you got some tools and things like that mhm worked on the demo parts for the office that kind of stuff did we talk about the office yeah I was doing Framing and demo and drywall and I'm doing mudding right now which is horrendous yeah and the previous episode we said hey we're working on the office this episode where what have you you decided to kind of put in some Sweat Equity with this alongside our contractor who did the kitchen renovation for us he came back and said hey I can help put the framing up um you my dad and my cousin all did the demo did the demo so now you got the framing up You' got the drywall up now you are like doing the mudding for the seams mhm is you want to you want to tell them how much that's your favorite part well what's the best part about you diying it what's the worst part well best part is I'm getting I'm learning I've never framed a house before or framed anything I mean it's it's nice to do it with someone who's done it as a career because they're just like oh you just do this this and this and he was helping and teaching and all that stuff the worst part is mudding let me tell you about mudding and sanding I mean there's got to be like as an engineer like I'm an engineer because I get frustrated by things that aren't official or done well and so as a career I was like well let's try to like make the world a better place by removing some frustration or making things better and I think and I'm glad that I don't do mudding for a living because there's got to be a better way to do mud and spackle and all that stuff than the way that I've been doing it for the past week that's very frustrating yeah you had tried one version of how to fix a seam it did not work and it didn't work so I tore it out in a violent way so that way I could do it the way that I wanted to do it the profanities that I hear sprinkled coming from upstairs I'm like hm I don't know if I want to go up there right now it's such a frustrating process I can't wait for it to be done I'm almost like I would have rather just done the framing and putting up the drywall and electrical all on my own and then just Outsource just the mudding because it's that frustrating you didn't know what you didn't know it's a it's a new process I am enjoying it overall like it has been fun to be like oh yeah and I sit in my office and I am working I'm going to be like I made this this is nice a little bit of that Pride so I'm still looking forward to it I'm I'm enjoying it and we picked out a paint color for your office it is Cracked Pepper from bear I think Home Depot Home Depot it's this really re really pretty kind of slate black I think is what I would call it okay deep deep deep deep gray it's deep very deep deep it's it's cool I mean I'm over the mess I can tell you that much yeah over the mess over the plastic tarping and draping so we just moved transferred the kitchen renom mess to the upstairs hallway anyway it'll be done soon prob another week that's October so we've got $3,300 which you guys probably know where that's going yeah home upgrades home upgrades upgrades that is going to go towards paying our contractor getting more stuff for your office and getting that all put together yeah no movie quotes this episode sorry guys well we had a lot of Story Time Y and then getting prepped for November December I put for November increased grocery budget it's Thanksgiving we're definitely going to be buying different specialty items for Thanksgiving and we're hosting Thanksgiving at our house oh cool which is really exciting yeah new house it's a great time to do it increasing the baby and gift budgets in November as well because I will be ordering our Christmas cards we took a photos family photos that turned out so cute um we're going to get my Costco tree yes I'm so happy you're happy about it too the old one is the old one is from Michaels and it's like we've had it since we lived in Manhattan no we got it our first year in San Diego yes oh man it's like it needs to be duct taped together it's it's not but you know what we're still going to keep it okay right we we can put it you know in the Hearth area or we can put it in the basement we'll put it somewhere yeah but I've had my eye on those Costco Christmas trees you know the ones the pre-lit ones that can change from white to multicolor and now we have the Kia to drive our and you know we got the Kia so we could get the Christmas tree yeah I mean math right that makes sense um got my mom's birthday coming up in November so I'm going to be doing some budget changes for that month and then obviously December we're getting Christmas gifts stay core we've got baby shower stuff yeah postpartum things that may be happening we don't know if this baby's going to be born in December or if she's like surprise happy New Year 2025 I'm going to come now we'll see she might be like it's cold staying in here yeah um if you haven't started budgeting for Christmas you better get real with yourself right now cuz you're always going to go over budget on Christmas there's always more people who want you want to give more gifts to or things you forgot about out or whatever so stick to it make yourself a budget if you got to make homemade gifts nothing wrong with that we've done it we've helped family do that nothing wrong with that so yeah keep it simple do a white elephant uh exchange gift exchange with your family we love doing that on my family last year I stole my sister's lottery tickets and then she somehow ended up with the ones that I originally had and so the ones that she opened won nothing and then the one that I opened that I stole from her had hundred bucks in yeah so it's so fun it's fun and we cap it at what $25 yeah 20 25 bucks yeah that's easy and I give you full permission to temporarily pause on some of those financial goals so you can cash flow the holidays I want you to have a good time during Thanksgiving and Christmas and not go into the debt for that so if that means pausing an extra payment on your debt for the month of December or for both months that's totally fine you can do that you can have those options just know hey I'm going to take a pause so I can cash flow and really enjoy myself for the holidays and then January I'm right back at it that is a wrap on October's budget again if you want to use this exact same template that we're using get all those extra worksheets and more be sure to check out the super budget template link below so you can purchase that get it for life and start using it to organize your finances very happy pleasantly surprised that how October ended up shaping up yeah yeah me too cuz we both have been sweating not going to lie we've both been sweating the finances we're like oh my gosh we're spending so much money we're not used to spending in this at this level we've been saving up for it it's just we've been seeing it sit there saved for so long that now that it's finally left the nest we're like where'd you go where'd you go why why yeah did you not love us anyways it's coming back to us and then some you know there's always doubts of like am I am I spending it on the right things but we have to trust we got to let it let it go can't bring it with us when we die cuz that's not how that works okay on that note and see you later we'll see you maybe in January when we will record November and December's budget oh man don't put it past us guys all right we'll catch you soon see holy cow right you got the kles [Music] yeah yeah [Music]