The Sixth Budget of the Year in Review

Happy new month, this means it’s time to share the sixth budget of the year in review aka the June budget and how I managed my money throughout the month. I must say that even though I thought the May budget was the most expensive so far this year, I was wrong because in June I managed complete the purchase of my first rental property. I shared a post and a video on the costs associated with purchasing a property. The idea behind the ‘budget of the year in review‘ series is to share how I manage my money, tracking how and where I spend my money as share tips on how you can too.

As I was preparing to share the sixth budget of the year in review, I had to take a deep breath because I found that I enjoy saving money more than I enjoy spending it. This is something I am working on because I am not just splurging the money that I work hard for but I am investing in things that make the money work hard for me too. On my YouTube channel, I share tips around investing, saving and budgeting because these are my passion because I love finding ways to make money work for me and not the other way round. In June, I took on a ‘riskier’ investment aka – crowdfund small businesses so we shall see how that goes.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor, seek professional finance advise for your particular needs.

The Sixth Budget of the Year in Review

Budgeting is an important financial tool that you need to help you understand where you are spending your money, how much you are saving and where to cut back on. I follow a couple types of budgeting rules but you don’t need to, you just need to follow a budgeting too that works for you and yours. I have mentioned the 50-30-20 rule which I follow that speakings about ensuring from your total income you spend 50% on needs (rent, utilities), 30% of wants (holidays, Netflix) and 20% of paying off debt or saving money. Apart from my mortgages, I don’t have any consumer debt so I aim to save at least 50% of my total income and live off of the other 50%.

Another budgeting rule that I follow is Zero-based budgeting which essentially just means that all my income subtract my expenditures equates to zero. This does not mean that I spend all my money but rather that every single £$ has a task to perform in my budget. As an example, £699.71 is the amount of money I allocate towards paying my minimum monthly mortgage repayment and £1000 is the amount of money I allocate towards savings. It is so important to ensure you give every single cent, dollar, penny, pound and whatever a job so that you know whether you are spending on something important to you or frivolously.

So, let’s look at where I spent my money via this sixth budget of the year in review and how much I was able to save.

One thing I need to make a mention is that, I did not add here the money I took from my savings to purchase my rental property and instead focus on (1) what I made from various sources and (2) where I spent the money. From the chart about you can see that I spent 68% in overall savings (savings + sinking funds), this is the biggest saving portion I have seen so far this year. I always aim to save at least 50% and live off the other 50% but for the month of June, I surpassed this even whilst still purchasing a rental property.

I had known at the time I was setting up my budget for the month of June that I would be saving at least 40% of my expected income and knowing that I wanted to save even more, I worked hard with my side hustles and made sure to save 70% of that income which inevitably brought my overall percentage to 68%. Budgeting is a tool that you set for yourself, you can make it as restrictive or as simple as you wish for it to be. I leave a lot of room in my budget for spending on fun things that I enjoy as well as tithing and giving to those who are less fortunate financially.

Other posts and money tips you may have missed

The month of June was one where I felt the most burn-out so I did not blog as much as I would have liked but I shared one post on ‘Financial Goals for the year (2021)‘ where I shared the goals I set at the beginning of the year and how I am getting on. Of the 16 goals I set for myself, I have pretty much done 75% of them already and this makes me really happy because my hard work is finally paying off. One of the major goals was to purchase my first rental property which I completed in June and soon I will collect the keys to the rental property to start renting it out.

Other money tips that I wanted to share are:

1. Investing – I recently started using Freetrade and got a free share for signing you. You can get a free share too by using my link. If you already have an account, you can use my E’toro link to sign up for an account with them at no extra cost to you and get $50.
2. Saving – I use an app called Plum which is connected to my main spending account and rounds up all my spending plus following the rules I set, it helps me save money for 52 weeks.

The month of June will go down in history has one of the best months ever since that is when I purchased my first rental but another epic month is July because it is my birthday and blog anniversary month. I hope you enjoyed the sixth budget of the year in review post, check out my YouTube channel and latest videos in the side bar.