It may seem a bit early to you, but I’m ready to start prepping our family’s Summer Spending plan. Generally speaking, the warmer months tend to be more expensive for us. We go out more. This year, we may even get to take a day trip or two to the beach. Not to mention, the cost of cooling our home in the South can be shocking at times.
So, now that spring is officially here and warmer weather is on its way (it’s 85 degrees and sunny today), I’m ready to start plotting out some of our plans for the Summer.
How Does Summer Impact Spending?
As I briefly mentioned above, the summertime tends to bring along some additional expenses for my family. Nobody wants to stay inside when it’s a beautiful warm day. So, there are often additional expenses that pop up.
Namely, our electric bill usually goes up to about $200/month from $100 or less during the winter months (we have gas heat). On top of that, it is generally a time of year when we take more trips, have more day adventures, and living is easy. We simply don’t always pay as close attention to our finances as we should from June to September.
That being said, we started tackling a summer Spending plan a few years ago that helps us map out necessary expenses as well as things we’d like to do during the warmer months.
Our Summer Spending Plan
I haven’t written out our summer spending plan in its entirety yet, but I know we are planning to do a few things…
- We would really love to take our daughter to the beach. She hasn’t been yet and both of us would love to be able to do that this summer. We live within a 3-hour drive of several great beaches here, so that is doable on a budget. If necessary, we wouldn’t even have to stay overnight.
- Another small pool needs to be purchased for the backyard. Last year, we bought a baby pool for the backyard and, even though it cost about $10, it provided our little one with countless hours of fun!
- We need to adjust our monthly budget to account for the increased electricity and water costs for our home during the summer months.
- Our little one is also going to need new clothes. We don’t have any spring or summer clothes that fit her currently.
Right now, we are working on nailing down what our budget for the summer needs to be and how much money we will need to save for certain holidays, trips, etc. For instance, Father’s Day falls in June, we will budget a little extra money for the holiday and find something my husband would like to do.
We are still hashing out the details, but these are the four things impacting our summer spending plan right now. Readers, do you construct a different budget or spending plan for different seasons? I’d love to hear about how you manage it.
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The post Now Is The Time To Prepare A Summer Spending Plan appeared first on Our Debt Free Family.
