June's Monthly Budget - One month ahead - Expenses, Debt Payments, Savings, Income - Debt Payoff

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]I cannot believe that the end of May is here already. That means it's time for me to put together my June budget. This is going to be the first time that I budget using my one month ahead fund, which makes me excited and nervous all at the same time. In this video, we are going to go over my June budget and we will talk a little bit about how I'm going to be managing my finances using my one month ahead fund as well as the income coming in in the month of June.

[00:00:28]So, let's take a look at the numbers and let's talk about it.

[00:00:33]Hi, and welcome back. If you are new here, my name is Jen and I am on a financial journey. I am working on budgeting, managing my finances, and paying off debt. I just saved enough money to finally start being one month ahead. And what I mean by that is I am going to be funding my month going forward in the beginning of the month.

[00:00:56]So, prior to June 1st, I will have the money that I need, the money that I'm budgeting with in my account ready to go to cover everything for June. And the income that I make throughout the month of June will be going towards the month of July. And I will be doing that every single month going forward. As long as there are no major catastrophes, I should be able to operate at one month ahead for the foreseeable future. At least that's my goal. I've been a paycheck ahead for I don't know the last five months and so it really does feel good to be a month ahead. Anyway, I'm going to open up my laptop. I'm going to go over my budget spreadsheet and talk about how I arranged everything for this month. And yeah, let's get into it.

[00:01:51]I am going to have my budget up on the screen. But before I do so, I just wanted to quickly put out this reminder that I do my monthly budgets on a spreadsheet. It's a Google Sheets spreadsheet. I do have a link to the one that I use in the video description if you're interested. I also do my bi-weekly or paycheck budgets on paper.

[00:02:11]So, those are the two methods that I am currently using. I have considered an app. I know I've received a lot of suggestions for different apps that people use, but I'm going to be honest and in the beginning of this journey before I even really truly started, I tried to jump in with an app and I've tried wab. I ended up getting a subscription to Quick and Simplify and I just couldn't I just couldn't figure it out. I got easily overwhelmed and partially probably because I had too much going on and I didn't know what I was doing. But I like to think that I'm pretty techsavvy. I don't think using these apps have anything to do with technology. But they were very confusing for me and it just really held me back that I kind of stayed away from them. I have been considering just trying it out again. Maybe I'm in a different place because I do see the benefit of it. But I'm also of the mindset like if it's working, why change it? However, I am trying to keep an open mind because at the same time, I don't know if an app would be better for me because I haven't tried it. So, I just wanted to put that out there that I am looking into possibly trying out an app. But for now, I am using my spreadsheet. I am perfectly happy with it and it's doing its job. I am going to start this budget slightly different as I'm going to start with the summary and then we will go into each section to talk about what makes up those numbers. And so up here on the screen I have my summary for June. So you will see here at the bottom of the summary there is a starting balance of $7,800.

[00:03:56]That is the money from my one-mon ahead fund that I will be budgeting with for the month of June. And then at the top of the summary, we have variable expenses, which is going to come out to $1,745.

[00:04:12]We have my monthly bills, and that is $3,230.

[00:04:18]My debt payments is $2,534.

[00:04:24]And in savings, I have $7,950.

[00:04:30]That savings technically is the money for my one month ahead fund for July, as well as my non-negotiable savings, and I'll go over that when we go through the savings section. Then in income, I have $7,812.

[00:04:50]That is the bare minimum money that I am planning on making throughout the month of June. And that is what is going to fund my one month ahead fund for July.

[00:04:59]Hopefully this makes sense. If not, I am hopeful that as I start talking about it, it will kind of all come together a little bit clearer. All the way at the bottom, you will see that there is a remaining amount of $153.

[00:05:13]And that's the money that I haven't really allocated yet, but I will be adding that to any extra income that I make from any of my side hustles that will then get distributed between an extra debt payment as well as savings.

[00:05:28]So that money will get assigned, but at this point in time, it is not needed to cover my expenses for the month of June.

[00:05:37]So, let's go ahead and we are going to start with what is coming out of the $7,800 that I am putting into my account prior to June 1st. And we are going to start with my monthly bills. Okay. So, for my monthly bills, I am going to go through each line item since there are a lot of new people on my channel. I am not going to go into a deep dive explanation of what each one is. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask those in the comments. I have explained these in other videos. So, if you want to go back and look at that, that that works, too. But I am open and I am happy to answer any questions. I just don't want to get very repetitive. So, we are going to go ahead and just start with the mortgage. That's $2,137.

[00:06:25]My HOA fee is $316.

[00:06:28]Nycore gas is the gas for my house and that's $109.

[00:06:33]Kameed is my electricity. It's $135.

[00:06:38]Aqua is my water bill for the house and that is $60. That is a few dollars more than what I was budgeting. I had $57 on there. However, I just noticed my bill for June is like $59. So, I am just going to put $60 going forward. My Verizon cell phone bill is $215.

[00:07:02]Because I know this seems to be a hot topic, I'm going to explain this one.

[00:07:07]This is for the service for my phone as well as the service for my mother's phone. And I do pay for devices as well.

[00:07:16]I have a payment on my device, a payment on my mom's device, and on my son's device. And the reason why I'm paying for my son's device was because that was a gift that I gave him and now I got to pay for it. And I am not paying those off early because I do get a promotional credit. There's no interest on it. I have plenty of other things that I need to pay for. So I am just going to continue to pay the $215 until those are paid off. The next line item is my Comcast security. That's the security system for my house. That's $55.

[00:07:52]T-Mobile is my internet plan and that is $70.

[00:07:57]I did consider moving my cell phones to T-Mobile to see if I can get a discount, but I'm going to be honest. I'm not ready to do that. I don't think the savings is worth the hassle of switching, but I am open to considering that. So, if I do see a good deal, because I do get offers pretty often, almost every time I get my bill for my internet, I will stay open to the idea of it and that is something that I may do down the line. But again, because I have those promotional credits for my device, I will lose that. But I don't know, maybe maybe I'll get some kind of offer and it'll be worth it. The next line item is Apple subscriptions. Those are subscriptions that I use that I pay for on a monthly basis. It is charged to my Apple card. I just make that payment at the end of the month. That's $28. My eBay store for reselling. That's 22.

[00:08:55]Vendue is inventory management. That's also for reselling. It's $25 a month.

[00:09:00]Spotify is 17. Netflix. Netflix went up again. And I just realized that on my last bill. So, it is now $20 a month.

[00:09:12]That is the only streaming service that I have that does not have ads because that is the one that I use the most. And I'm okay with that. I am not prepared to, you know, watch ads on Netflix to save $10. It's just one of those things.

[00:09:28]So, $20 is what I pay a month for Netflix. Google Nest, $10. That is the camera for my doorbell as well as my thermostat. So, that's a subscription.

[00:09:41]And then my Google storage is $3 and Canva is $13. So, that brings my monthly bills to $3,235.

[00:09:57]Now, we can go over the variable expenses.

[00:10:01]So, for variable expenses, I am leaving my groceries the same. It's $820 a month. This is not just for me. I don't eat $820 worth of food. I buy the groceries for my house. And it's mostly me and my daughter. My son pretty much buys his own things. I keep some of the staples and regular items in the fridge.

[00:10:24]That comes out of my grocery budget.

[00:10:26]That's what works for me. That's what I want to do. And so it's $820.

[00:10:32]The gas for my car, I have decided to keep it at 400 even though I probably I probably could reduce it to 200. But what I am going to do at least for the next month or two is keep it at 400.

[00:10:47]Anything that I do not use will then go into my vehicle maintenance syncing fund. I haven't decided what I want that fund to be at as far as like grand total, but I am going to come up with a number whether it's $1,000 or $2,000, but then once I hit that number, anything over that will be put towards an extra car payment. So, that's what I've decided to do. I may change my mind, but for right now, I'm leaving it at 400. Again, anything that I don't use from that fund will get put into my vehicle maintenance syncing fund. And then for eating out, I have $100 for the month. Personal care, I have 150. My household supplies, I have 75.

[00:11:38]I may, now that I'm looking at this, I may need to increase that, but I'm going to leave it at 75 for right now. And then miscellaneous, I have 200 and nothing for unplanned because I don't plan for unplanned. But anyway, that brings my total for variable expenses to $1,745.

[00:12:06]We will talk a little bit more about variable expenses at the end, but that's what I have for right now. Now we can go over to my debt payments. So for my debt payments, I have the four debts that I'm focusing on paying right now. And the first one is my SoFi loan. That's a personal loan. My minimum on that loan is $1,329.

[00:12:33]Bank of America is a credit card. What I commit to paying every month is $367.

[00:12:40]That's not the minimum payment. That is just the amount that I need to pay in order to pay this credit card off before the 0% interest runs out. And the same thing with the US Bank credit card. My budgeted amount is $121.

[00:12:57]That's to ensure that that card is paid off before the 0% interest runs out. And then Honda Financial, that is my car payment, and it's $717.

[00:13:10]That brings my total debt payment for the month of June to $2,534.

[00:13:18]Now, let's jump back over to income. So, even though my month of June is funded, I am still going to be making money throughout the month of June, and that will get put towards July. Since I'm using $7,800 to budget every month going forward, I need to make in the month of June at least $7,800.

[00:13:43]So July can be fully funded by July 1st.

[00:13:47]So what I have under income is my first paycheck, my W2 paycheck for $3,16.

[00:13:55]My second paycheck will also be $3,16.

[00:14:00]And then I have side hustle income. I have to make at least $1,600 in side hustle income. That's what I have always budgeted with. However, that has always come from shipped and that is $400 per weekend doing shipp. I am now going to commit to 1,600 no matter what side hustle it comes from. Now, I do have a goal of making $1,000 every month over this 1,600. I am not budgeting with that money. That money then gets counted at the end of the month. What I am committing to in the month of June is these three income sources and that is going to fund July. So, my budgeted amount for income for the month of June is $7,812.

[00:14:58]And that is going to be going into savings. So, let's check out savings.

[00:15:04]So, in my savings column, I have my non-negotiable savings, and that is $100 to my emergency fund. I may add more, but my bare minimum that I want to put into my emergency fund every month is $100. So, my emergency fund currently has, I think, $1,800 in it. And I know some people are like, "Oh, well, you only need a th000 in your emergency fund." But I don't. I want to make sure that my emergency fund keeps growing.

[00:15:36]Again, I am single. I am responsible for my mortgage, my car. I'm responsible for all these payments on my own. $1,000 will not get me very far. And granted, now I have my one month ahead fund, so I have a little bit more of a safety net, but I still I don't feel comfortable not adding to my emergency fund every month.

[00:16:00]So, for me, personal decision, I have to put $100 in my emergency fund every month. In addition, I also am committing to putting $50 non-negotiable in my home maintenance fund every month. Now, I don't have a whole lot in there right now. I have a few hundred, but that home maintenance will help me cover anything that goes wrong with my AC, with my heating, with my plumbing, with my appliances, anything that might come up that's going to come out of my home maintenance fund. And so that is why I have to put at least $50 every month in home maintenance. And the last item in savings is my one month ahead fund.

[00:16:44]That's $7,800 that will get put into the month of July. Does that make sense? I know I've been getting some comments about the one month ahead fund where people think that is just going to sit in a savings account. That's more of like a rotating fund. So it will rotate monthtomonth. So what I saved so far is now funding June.

[00:17:10]What I make in June will fund July and what I make in July will fund August. So it's not just money that I'm putting into an account to sit in savings where I can see where it might sound like that, but this is just money that I am budgeting in advance. The purpose of that is if I get sick, if an emergency pops up and I can't do my side hustle, I know that my bills are covered.

[00:17:37]Previously, up until right now, every week, I had to make a certain amount of money to make sure my bills the following week were paid. I don't have to do that anymore. I still have to make a certain amount of money every month, but I have a little bit more leeway, a little bit more breathing room. So, if I have to move my schedule around, my bills are not going to be late. My bills are covered. They're going to get paid.

[00:18:04]I just need to now make sure in the next 30 days I make enough money to cover the 7800 that I need for the following month. I hope that explains it a little bit better. And hopefully it makes sense. I mean, it makes sense to me and it gives me the security and the safety net that I need to be able to just breathe a little bit.

[00:18:29]So, that brings my savings. I don't think I gave a total, but my savings is $7,950 for the month of June. And that's it.

[00:18:40]That is what I have on my June budget.

[00:18:43]So, I allocated my $7,800 that I have now, and I have my plan for how I am going to fund July. So, one thing that I wanted to talk a little bit more about is the variable expenses.

[00:18:58]Prior to June 1st, I will deposit into my bills checking account everything that I need to pay my monthly bills and my debt payments. Then I will be transferring the money that I am putting into my emergency fund and my home maintenance account into my high yield savings account. Then my variable expenses, that amount I will be putting into my cash binder into envelopes. I do have a buffer in my checking account that I don't even look at. I have $500 that just sits there in my bills account as a buffer. that money will be there.

[00:19:37]And this way I can still if I have to use my debit card for gas, I will. For online groceries, I will. But then I will take the money out of each envelope and put it into my back to the bank envelope. And then bi-weekly, I will deposit that money back into my checking account. Maybe I'll do it weekly, but I'm committing to bi-weekly. And that will ensure that my 500 buffer always stays in intact, but it'll also allow me the convenience that I need to not have to pay cash at the gas station. I can still use my Target card to get the 5% back. It's linked to my checking account and I can still do my online groceries even though I haven't done it in a while because I've been going in person. I have that option. If I do use my debit card for those items, I'll just take that money out of each category from my wallet and put it back. Now, I am not putting this full amount in my wallet.

[00:20:37]So, let's talk about groceries. For example, my monthly budget for groceries is $820.

[00:20:43]I'm going to divide that into weeks. I will put my one week of groceries in my wallet, but the additional three weeks will sit in an envelope in my binder.

[00:20:53]and every week I will move over what I need into my wallet. So hopefully that makes sense, but I will be doing that for each category. Now, one thing that I want to get a better hold on is my miscellaneous spending. Now, I sometimes get real close to that 200 or I go over slightly and I need to rein that in and I either need to have different categories or I need to figure out why I keep going over and it's not over by a lot, but over is over. I really shouldn't be spending money in miscellaneous categories without really knowing what I'm spending. So, for the month of June, I really want to commit to keeping a better track prior to the end of the month of what is going into these miscellaneous categories and either not spending that money or if I need to create different categories. And for example, one thing that always goes into miscellaneous spending is parking. Now, I could make my gas category more like gas and parking because it has to do with my car. That's something I may need to do. And I have more than enough funding in my gas envelope to cover gas, parking, tolls, and even have extra to put into my vehicle maintenance fund.

[00:22:17]But I am not really sure because I haven't been keeping that good of a track on that miscellaneous spending category. I can go back into all my transactions and check that, but I want to commit that in June I will definitely keep an even closer eye on those miscellaneous cash transactions. And so I just I just want to I don't know. I just want to like for personal reasons I just want to focus on that miscellaneous spending and you know get a little bit more of a read. I don't want to have $200 a month that I just spend on whatever. I want to be very intentional with how I am spending my money and also how I am saving my money. So, as it comes to savings, as I explained, anything extra that I make over the income that I'm budgeting, that will get split up into debt payments and savings. Now, I have that goal that I mentioned to make $1,000 extra in side hustle money over what I have budgeted because I also have a goal to make an extra debt payment every month of at least $1,000.

[00:23:22]That's where that income goal comes from. So, that is still my goal. Every month out of the extra income that I make, I want to send a thousand to my extra debt payment. Anything over that thousand I will either put into savings and I will cash stuff it into different categories or I will also make a higher debt payment over a thousand. Really depends on how much I make and that will be distributed in my month in review at the end of each month. I think I covered everything. now to one make sure that I am on track to make this $1,600 side hustle income goal and that I am paying everything on time and my variable expenses have not gone crazy. I am still doing a bi-weekly check-in, a bi-weekly I guess budget and that will keep me on track throughout the month. I just don't want to have any surprises come the end of the month. Again, this is new. This is very new to me. I have never been this ahead before. And so, I may tweak it as I go. I may start looking at some apps and realize that that is more beneficial to me now that I am in this position. I am not sure. I am just going to see how it goes for the next month or three months before I make some major changes. But it's not very different. I mean, my expenses hasn't changed. It's just how I'm funding them that has changed a little bit where I am now funding everything in the beginning of the month versus waiting to get paid every week. And I don't know, that's just a relief to me. So that's what I have for the month of June. Again, if you have any suggestions, feedbacks, comments, please leave them, you know, down below in the comment section. I just ask that you're respectful. I try and answer as many comments as I can. I do see majority of the comments like as they come in the first day or two of the video and then any comments that come in after that. Sometimes I see them, sometimes I don't. It YouTube is kind of weird of how they place the comments, but I do my best to check all the comments and I also try to respond to as many as possible.

[00:25:47]But if you have any questions on the information that I have here, why I'm doing things a certain way, feel free to ask me. I will 100% answer them as long as I am capable of answering it. I've received so many amazing suggestions throughout the past few months regarding my budget, regarding how I have my expenses, regarding cash stuffing, regarding savings. It has been such a tremendous help. So, I thank you. I appreciate you and like I said I am just sharing what works for me and if you are in a similar situation you are working on your finances your budget debt payoff I see you and I can totally relate I'm just sharing what I do in hopes that it will maybe give you a suggestion in something that might work for you. The last thing I wanted to say was that June marks nine months. So, at the end of June, I will put together my next quarterly update of all my balances and where I'm sitting at. Like I said, I made a promise that every 3 months, I will do a debt update. And so, that will be coming. I am putting that together at the end of June. So, sometime in the first week of July or so, I will be posting my debt update of where I'm at.

[00:27:09]And yeah, I think that's it. So, with that being said, again, like I said already, I appreciate you and thank you so much for being on this journey with me. And I cannot wait to see you in the next one. Bye.