Budget...Revamped

Okay, okay, okay...so i've re-vamped the budget. I took part in The Simple Dollar's '31 Days to fix your finances' (You can find it here). Admittingly, I did all 31 days in about 2 afternoons, but a lot of the tabs didn't apply to me (home insurance, vehicles, debt, etc). I would highly recommend it, I learned a lot and it really opened my eyes. I have learned a couple things about why my previous budget won't work, and I have come up with a new one.

Okay, so, a brief summary of my finances: I make $12 an hour. I work a full 40 hour week. That adds up to about $24.960.00 before taxes. The past 3 paycheques I have seen about 13% taken off in taxes. So that means that my take home yearly salary is around $21,715.20. I have only two monthly expenses: my cell phone ($40/month) and my bus pass ($75/month). This means that my actual take home pay after those deductions is $20,435.20. So, seeing this for the first time puts my goal of saving $20,000 a bit difficult. So, instead, I have come up with a new savings goal: $16,000 in savings and a $2,000 emergency fund by the end of June 2008.

So, the plan is the same, for my first paycheque of the month (the 15th)- save 80% for savings and 10% for the emergency fund, while 10% goes into chequing for my spending pleasure.

The plan for the second paycheque of the month (3rd last buisness day of the month), I take $115 out of the total($40 for my dad for my cell phone and $75 to buy my buss pass) then split the rest into my 80/10/10 scheme.

However, the plan for June's paycheques deviate a little bit from this plan because of some money I owe my mom for the vacation. I owe her $702 for the week-long stay in the apartment in London. So, I will put that money aside from the paycheque, after which I will only have a couple hundred bucks left. That remaining money will be split 50/50 between my chequing and savings in order to pad both accounts a little bit. June's second paycheque will be back on track with the regular scheme.

I feel relieved that I have it all sorted out, and although i'm a little disapointed that i'm not going to be able to save what I had originally planned, however, I haven't added in any of the extra money that I get during the year, including GST/HST rebates and odd money I get from bonuses or gifts, etc.

Hope you are all doing well!