They help me with accountability.īut if you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck, stick with one checking account and one savings account for now. Personally, I have multiple accounts for irregular expenses and savings goals. But you may be able to earn more interest by having the money in savings instead of checking. Of course, you don’t have to set up a separate bank account for irregular expenses. You would make an automatic transfer of $100 a month from your checking account to a savings account that you opened specifically for infrequent expenses.īefore your infrequent bills are due, just transfer money from your savings to checking and pay them in full. Step four is to open a separate high-interest savings account for your irregular expenses in order to stay organized. It can also help you avoid surprises when those bills arrive. Setting aside money every month for annual and semi-annual expenses will give you a better idea of your true spending. Consider Opening an ‘Irregular Expenses’ Savings Account But if you don’t use a Fixed Expenses worksheet with Google Sheets, add irregular expenses to your monthly budget on the Summary tab. The Fixed Expenses worksheet is optional. Which is best? That depends on how detailed you want to be with your budgeting. When you’re adding the monthly amount for irregular expenses, you have two choices: Create a single line for all of your irregular expenses or create multiple lines to separate them. That way, irregular expenses (along with monthly fixed expenses) are separate from variable expenses that have a greater impact on your day-to-day spending. If you’re using the Google Sheets budget template, I suggest that you add this monthly amount for irregular expenses to the Fixed Expenses worksheet that I explain my step-by-step tutorial. In the example above, you would add $100 into your monthly budget to account for the $1,200 a year for irregular expenses. Add the Amount to Your Monthly BudgetĪfter you’ve added up the total of your irregular expenses on a yearly basis and divided it by 12, you want to incorporate that number into your monthly budget. I’ll explain why that number is important in the next step. When you divide that number by 12, you get $100. In this example, the total for irregular expenses is $1,200 a year. Here’s a simple example of how that may look: Category Annual Spending Insurance $600 Gifts $300 Taxes $300 Total $1,200 Once you’ve calculated your annual spending for each irregular expense separately, the second step is to add them up and divide the total by 12. Now, make a list of the irregular expenses by reviewing past statements.Īfter you’ve made a list, estimate how much you spend in each irregular expense category every year. ![]() If you’ve followed my Google Sheets budgeting method, you probably already have a handle on your regular monthly expenses. In this article, I’ll share four steps to work infrequent expenses into a monthly budget. Without a budget, these expenses may catch you by surprise. Whether it’s insurance, taxes or gifts, there are a number of expenses that don’t happen monthly. “I am going to separate fixed expenses (mortgage, utilities, etc.) and then track variable expenses-but where do you recommend I put expenses that occur either every six months or yearly (life insurance, car registration), or infrequently/unpredictably (car repairs, pet medical expenses, home/pool repairs, etc.)? They are not monthly so not sure how to plan/track those.” 4 Steps to Budget For Irregular Expenses With Google Sheets That’s exactly the question that a reader emailed me to ask: If you’ve created a monthly budget with Google Sheets, you may be wondering how to budget for irregular expenses that come up annually or semi-annually.
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