I am struggling with letting myself us my sink funds. I find it easy to save and live but then I find myself naturally cutting corners and living simply and then mostly able to manage without touching our sink funds. But then like this month we have a lot of things I accounted for in the sink funds like kid's camps. I charged $1500 in summer camps. Why am I hesistaning to use the sink funds? That is what it's planned for? I budgeted $800/month into sink funds and we have $4400 in there so we are on target. Isn't that what it's for? Monthly expenses paid 1x a year that we know are coming. Like summer camp or travel or extracurricular. Much like saving for property taxes.
I am having trouble not maxing out the property taxes. I know I should do what I planned like $500 a pay period. But instead we have $5100 in there already for October 31st, 2021. Plus that is almost enough to cover the car insurance and home insurance due in August which is also part of the budget annually. So why I am being so paranoid? I don't know. I don't have an answer why I feel this need to put the "escrow" fund to be fully funded before sink or retirement. I guess it makes me feel better to know that we aren't worried about it. That sure we have June, July, Aug, Sept, and October, to save for the other things. But then we have to get into the routine of saving for our property taxes and insurances.
Then there is our $7800 tax refund. What do I do with it? I was going to stash it into savings but should I use it for funding sink funds? And then call it? I also have a high credit card stash I'm not sure I can pay because of our all our "sink" fund charges do I use it to pay it?
I am back where I used to be 5 years ago. Having a hard time spending money again. When you worry about a budget even if it's a generous budget I can't help but feel a little constrained. Worried that I am not saving enough. Worried that I should be doing more. I can see how being mustachian can become an addiction.
How do you find the balance of saving and spending?
May 25th, 2021 at 07:09 pm 1621969778
May 25th, 2021 at 08:21 pm 1621974067
May 26th, 2021 at 12:25 am 1621988729
May 26th, 2021 at 12:48 pm 1622033286
If you are fully funding your sinking funds, have no debt, and have a fully funded fund, and are fully funding retirement and college funds, then you either can use the ‘extra’ money to increase your lifestyle or you can invest it, or save it until you have a want/need.
But make sure you are really on track with everything before you decide money is ‘extra.’
May 26th, 2021 at 05:00 pm 1622048429