Today, I am continuing the detailed examination of my budget ^[1]. Please see part one ^[2] to catch up.

^[3]

This time, I’m going to look at my monthly bills. These are predictable and recurring expenses, though not all of them are entirely out-going.

Let’s dig in:

• House Payment - We have a small payment. We have a small-ish house. It’s in a post-WWII development and we refinanced at an excellent time.
• Netflix - I am a movie geek. Netflix scratches that itch much cheaper than buying movies. This expense is a massive money saver at my house.
• Cell Phone - I recently allowed myself to be convinced ^[4] to get smartphones. There are a hundred pros, but one major con. It doubled our monthly cost.
• Dish - When our contract is up, this bill is going away. We did recently convince them to lower our bill, just by asking.
• Cable Internet - While many people consider high-speed internet a luxury, I consider it a necessary expense. I am a computer programmer, and I try to maintain a regular side-hustle or two. I regularly use this to maintain current income and generate alternate income streams.
• Car Payment - Sometime late next year, we will finish paying for our last car loan. I got my car less than one year old, just off-lease. I got a good price for what I got, but it was still the fastest lifestyle expansion I’ve ever done after a raise.
• Insurance - This is all of our insurance policies.
• Personal Line of Credit - This was a consolidation that shaved almost 10% off my interest rate. Currently the target of my debt snowball.
• Credit Card - This is our painful debt. 10 years of regret in wallet-sized plastic. Thanks to the CARD Act, my payment keeps increasing. While that’s good in the long-term, it’s screwing my budget ^[5] every month.
• Gas(Home) - We are on the budget plan, to allow for planning, and we have a repair plan, that will be ending as soon as my warranty fund is ready. We updated our furnace and AC last year, cutting this bill in half.
• Allowance - This is the most we’ve paid, yet, for allowance ^[6]. My son decides his own income, but hasn’t made it over $20/month.
• Electric - Also a budget plan. I’m working on trimming this, but I don’t think it will go much lower.
• Debt - This is the snowball ^[7].
• Phone - Our land line. It’s the cheapest we can get, but it cannot be replaced with our cell phones. That’s not an option with our situation. That’s okay with me, because I hate the idea of a single point of failure in any of the systems in my life.
• Savings $25.00 - It’s not much, but it’s something. We’re slowly building the emergency fund to cover 6 months of our expenses. We’ve got some time before we accomplish that. Debt first.
• College fund $10.00 - Also not much ^[8]. This will be scaled up a bit as our incomes rise and debts fall.

Total transparency is an interesting feeling. I tried to do it, but I can’t. I am far too much a private person to detail the amounts of everything I pay. I’ll make do with showing the line items. You can guess at the amounts.

Related posts:

1. Budget Lesson, Part 5 ^[10] I’ve explained my budget in some detail already. See these posts for the history of this series. Now, I’m going to go through each section,...
2. Budget Lesson, Part 3 ^[11] I keep calling these lessons, but they are examples and explanations, more than lessons. Names aside, please see Part 1 and Part 2 to catch...
3. Budget Lesson, Part 6 ^[12] It’s been a month since I’ve written a post for the budget series, so I’ll be continuing that today. See these posts for the history...