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Extra Money?

February 19th, 2013 at 08:58 pm

One thing I'm not sure about is what to do with the extra money I have each month. I'm not talking about extra money from my salary, but the money that comes from taking surveys, finding money, you know--the money you don't and can't really count on.

My question is how to add it into the budget. Right now, I just have a generic category that includes all extra money. But should I add that extra money to specific categories? I don't get an accurate picture of my budget if I say I spent $250 in groceries, but $20 of that was money I received from returning pop cans (Michigan has a 10 cent per can deposit, so when you return the can, you get 10 cents per can). Or I spent $34 at Amazon for my birthday present (a cookbook and a half sheet pan), but I used gift certificates for them, so I don't want to take that money out of gifts. Or I could add in the Amazon gift certificate amount to gifts, so it would be a wash.

How complicated. But I don't know how else to be accurate. Unfortunately, I can sometimes be talking about $50-$100 per month in extra money. That's quite a bit to be unaccounted for.

How do you handle the "extra" money? Does it just get thrown into savings and you don't worry about it much?

Posted in Budgeting | 9 Comments »

9 Responses to “Extra Money?”

  1. Petunia 100 Says:
    February 19th, 2013 at 09:14 pm 1361308466
    1361308466

    I do not add extra money to my budget. Instead, it is always earmarked for something in particular. Right now, it is going into my E fund. In the past, it was earmarked for extra mortgage principal.

  2. creditcardfree Says:
    February 19th, 2013 at 09:18 pm 1361308735
    1361308735

    I have several pots of money in one checking account. Each pot has a balance on a spreadsheet. The balances added together equal the balance in the checking account. If I pull money from a pot, I simple adjust my spreadsheet. Hope that makes sense.

  3. JulieA Says:
    February 19th, 2013 at 09:19 pm 1361308759
    1361308759

    I'm interested in good ideas. I have a $25 paypal payment from Swagbucks coming soon. I've been saving the $5 Amazon cards for Christmas shopping but I haven't decided how to handle this yet. I should probably put it into a slush fund somewhere and then use it for some of the unexpected expenses and overages that always seem to pop up.

  4. Beawealthywarrior Says:
    February 19th, 2013 at 09:30 pm 1361309421
    1361309421

    Well if u have debt you can put any extra on it. Sometimes I apply extra to my mortgage, Christmas, vacation fund, things of that nature

  5. BuckyBadger Says:
    February 19th, 2013 at 10:05 pm 1361311536
    1361311536

    I don't think that sort of money should be added back into the budget, because it's not money that you can count on. Your budget should be a way to live within your means -- it shouldn't change with an unexpected windfall of, say, an Amazon gift card.

    Those sorts of unexpected funds should be put toward your current goals: debt repayment, emergency fund, additional investments...

    ceejay has a good way to do this that she talks about in passing on her blog quite frequently. If she gets a $50 gift card for some unknown reason, she will -- for example -- use it for groceries. Then she takes $50 out of the grocery money and puts that money toward her goal. That's the way you can transform that kind of windfall into money toward your goals. You may not be able to turn a $30 amazon card into "cash" so you just use it for something you would otherwise use cash for and then take the same amount of cash and put it somewhere special.

    Make sense?

  6. creditcardfree Says:
    February 19th, 2013 at 10:19 pm 1361312349
    1361312349

    I, too, do what BuckyBadger describes with gift cards. Use them as part of my regular spending, but then set aside the cash equal to that amount towards the goal i want it allocated to.

  7. LuckyRobin Says:
    February 20th, 2013 at 01:08 am 1361322487
    1361322487

    I tend to put it into something I'm saving for. The applicance fund or the emergency fund. It really doesn't go into the budget at all.

  8. MissAngel Says:
    February 21st, 2013 at 06:19 pm 1361470792
    1361470792

    Thanks all! Very good ideas. Maybe my problem is that I'm not really saving for something specific. I am saving money for an eventual car replacement, but for now, the 10-year-old Bug is doing very well. No credit card debt, no car debt, no mortgage. Wait! Maybe I should do a post about that! Wink

  9. buckybadger Says:
    February 22nd, 2013 at 01:17 am 1361495844
    1361495844

    If you're not saing for anything specific, you can always increase what you're saving for retirement. Unless you're already maxing out a Roth IRA, there's no reason you can't add your "snowflakes" to improve your future days!!

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