It's taken about 3 months of DH's new salary for us to find our budget. I think I have it ironed out mostly.  This year we will projecting a refund of $10,158 because of an overpayment of social security and just overpayment.  I don't know how to adjust it because DH has a strange payroll. They do not do a w2 they do a deductions and number of people in the family.  Next year our refund should be $2200 but I'll do quarterly estimates throughout the year.  This year we just got back our refund of $7716 which I put into savings hoping to hit $16k by January 2022 to contribute to 2 Roth IRA ($6k each) and 2 Coverdell ESA ($2k each).

That being said I think we have a pretty accurate budget and here is how it is going.  DH is paid biweekly so we get 2 extra paychecks a year.  We do have medical, vision, and dental, but no 401k or retirement savings.  Because of the biweekly nature I am budgeting on 2 paychecks a month and planning on saving 2 extra paychecks which is what happened.  DH makes $5457/paycheck after taxes.  Total monthly income is $10,914 net.  We currently pay $3839/month mortgage, $10706/year property taxes ($411/pay period), $909.70 home insurance/year, $270/year umbrella insurance, and $1988/year auto insurance.  I budget $1000/month (2 biweekly paychecks) for property taxes and umbrella insurance.  Auto insurance is budgeted from sink funds.  

$10914 Income
-$3839 Mortgage
-$1000 Property taxes/insurance
-$800 Sink Funds
-$3600 Spending - transfer to other checking for paying CC
-$1675 Savings - but trying to do $2000/month savings because we should be saving.

Technically we should be savings $2400/month which would be closer to the 20% we need to save of our income with the 2 extra paychecks a year.  So we should actually be living on $2800/month and $800 sink and $2500/month savings.

Again like I pointed out the problem is our mortgage.  We are at 44% of our net income monthly on our house.  The refinance will bring us down to 38%/month and will basically make it so that we can save 20% of our salary for the next 7 years until we have to pay the piper.  So we are pretty much having a handle on our "budget".  Doing better than expected.  

Also we probably need to budget the $3600/month more.  I'm learning about that as well.  Here is the budget.

Sink
Auto $1988
Life DH $1098
Life LAL $243
LTCI $720 (new not yet started)
Kids Math $6000
Amazon $120
Costco $120
=$9596 / 12 = $796 ($800/month)

Budget $3600
Electric $200 (balanced billing)
Water $150
Internet $60
Cell Phones $90 (3 lines, 2 tablets)
Spotify $11
Sirius $6
Dog $500 (this varies wildly)
Cleaner $300
Yard $300
= $1983 for groceries, eating out, clothes, gas, and everything else including travel, etc.

So that's probably why my $ don't have a job.  We are still figuring out how to budget the rest of the $2k/month spending. I've found I'm able to cashflow the kids camps, travel, groceries, eating out.  Becoming conscious has made me aware of what I'm spending on cooking, eating out and just in general spending.  In february we started $1056 on groceries and $45 on eating out.  March we spent $820 on groceries and $112 on eating out.  In april we spent $589 on groceries and $212 on eating out, and in May thus far we've spent $431 on groceries and $184 on eating out.  So we've been able to go traveling and pay for 4 weeks of kids camps and airfare for the summer but it's about to get to the point where we might have to touch the sink funds.   If we can keep our spending down in the next month it should smooth everything over.

But i can see how not having my $ have a job hurts but at the same time I feel like I'm also only slowly curating a budget.  I'm still tracking spending and watching as well spend and capping it, rather than naming it and letting it evolve.