Our Family’s Transparent Finances for October 2025

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Years ago, before we started budgeting, I was always stressed out about money. Every transaction had me on edge. While we didn’t carry any credit card debt, we used credit cards. I felt like my mind was always bogged down with thinking about how much the credit card bill would be so that I could make sure we had money to cover it. We never had to pay any interest on our credit card purchases, but the stress of balancing today’s purchases along with last month’s purchases all while being mindful of the checking account balance, was exhausting!

Little did I know that taking on the daunting task of paying off our six-figure student loan debt would make my life easier, not harder. Of course there were hard sacrifices that we made during those few years, but getting our finances organized and having a plan brought SO MUCH peace. I thought that we would have to wait until we were debt-free to feel this heavy burden lifted.  On the contrary, we felt peace and stopped stressing over money long before the debt was all paid!

The key was having a budget. Not just a list of how much we wanted to spend in each category, but a budget where we divided our actual money between categories (which we do with YNAB) and tracked all of our spending, subtracting what we spent from the total amount in the category. When a category needed more funds, we moved money from a different category to cover the spending, but without increasing our total spending. To make it even better, we got a month ahead so we were using last month’s money for this month’s expenses.

For well over a decade I have been sharing our family’s finances to give an example of how a budget can work. Having an organized budget had blessed both our finances and our mental health. I want that for you too! What questions do you have about budgeting?

Here’s what our spending and earning looked like in October 2025.

Spending in October

When we first understood the concept of living on last month’s income, it rocked our financial world in the best kind of way. If you have no idea what that means, here’s a video walk-through. Or you can read up on how you can get started.

At the beginning of each month, we start budgeting by first adding up the income we earned the month before. We knew on October 1st exactly how much money we had earned and received between September 1 and September 30, so we knew exactly how much we could spend between October 1 and October 31. On October 1st, we start the October budget by taking everything we earned in September and assigning it to our October budget categories.

We can’t see the future, so on the first of October, these dollar assignments are really just our best guesses and goals. We’ve been doing this for years and can make some pretty good guesses, but every month is different. Our dollar assignments at the beginning of the month almost never stay exactly the same because our needs and priorities usually change during a month.

It’s normal for our spending plan to change as we move through the month. The important thing isn’t spending exactly how much we guessed we might spend in each budget area at the beginning of the month. It would be silly to let our October 1st guesses dictate what we can and can’t do all during the month. The important thing is to not spend more total in October than we earned in September.

If we need to spend more in one budget category than we had originally assigned, that money has to come from some other budget category. We revise the budget categories to meet our priorities during the month, but we can’t just add more money to all of them, because the total amount stays the same all month long. A changed budget is not a failed budget. A budget needs to be flexible in order to be successful!

Here’s our family’s final October spending for all of our budget categories.

Giving

Tithing – $1,252  We start out the month paying a 10% tithe on our income. Like all of our October spending, our tithing is calculated on what we earned in September. We often get questions about this. You can read our thoughts on tithing here.

Fast Offering – $100 Each month we take one day to go without food and drink (fasting) and contribute to a program that helps people who need it.

Monthly Bills

Mortgage – $2,453  We are back to paying our actual mortgage bill each month instead of paying extra.  We have a 15-year mortgage on our 2200 sq ft house in Northern California. We’re so thankful to have locked in our mortgage interest rate at 2.375% when we refinanced in December of 2020 (all of the details and numbers are here.) We currently have $140,261 remaining on our mortgage.

Here’s our mortgage payoff goal tracker house (you can get your own copy in my shop)!

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Electricity – $6 Two years ago we installed solar panels on our property, a $70,000 investment that we finished paying for last year.  Our electric bill is just the $6 unavoidable fee.

Car Insurance – $374 We have three vehicles with two adult drivers and two teen drivers. I don’t think the insurance has gone up yet with the newest driver (a 16-year-old boy), but I know our premiums will go up soon.

Internet – $110 We have cable internet through Comcast. When we bought our home eight years ago, we invested $5,000 to have Comcast extend cable internet to our property. It has been worth it every single day since then, even though the cost for internet service went up recently.

Water – $250 Our water bill comes every other month. I had set aside about half of what I expected the bill might be.

Garbage- $60 Like the water bill, our trash pick-up bill comes every other month, so each month we set aside the money for half of the bill. The cost seems to go up several times a year.

Cell Phones – $75 After two years of paying for the cell phones for the Ukrainian family that we sponsor, they are now paying their own cell phone bills, which leaves us with 4 phones in our family. Mike is on the annual plan, so we only pay 3 phone bills per month. Our phones are all through Visible. Visible is a Verizon subsidiary that offers no-contract plans with wifi calling, unlimited cell calls, and unlimited data on the Verizon network. We’ve been using them for years. You can’t beat paying just $25 per phone each month with unlimited data.

Gym – $60 For the first time in our lives, we joined a gym this year. Our teenagers were extra excited, since it’s a small local gym that many of their friends go to. We hope that investing in our fitness now will make life better now and for years into the future.

Everyday Expenses

Food – $847 We are a family of 8 including 3 athletic teens. We primarily buy ingredients and cook at home, rather than eating out or buying convenience food. If we do get pizza or anything like that, it goes in this category since we don’t have an “eating out” category in our budget. If you need help getting your grocery spending under control, you can learn all about my strategies and method in my Grocery Budget Hero online course. Right now it’s available with pay-what-you-can pricing!

Fuel – $632 Throughout the month of October, gas here was $4.15 per gallon at the station that we frequent, which is oddly less than what Sam’s Club is charging 30 minutes down the road.

Household Misc – $278 This includes our normal toiletries, household things, and subscriptions.

Clothing – $14 – We made a couple purchases, but also made some returns, so our net spending was low.

Animals – $0 We didn’t need anything for our animals in October.

Allowances – $143 We give our six kids “practice money” as a weekly allowance.  You can read all about why we decided to pay our kids allowance that’s not directly tied to chores, as well as all the details of when and how much in this blog post.

School – $99 We paid for another AP test for our oldest.

Sinking Funds

For our regular budget categories above, we take out any funds that are still left at the end of the month and send them toward our big financial goal. For example, if we started the month with $800 in our food budget category, but only used $720 of that, the other $80 would go toward our current major financial goal. Focusing all these extra funds from each category into one goal helped us pay off our law school debt years earlier than we thought possible.

In contrast to the regular budget categories above that we zero out each month, we also put money into the categories below. These are our sinking funds. Our sinking funds are categories where we set aside money for periodic expenses each month and let it roll over and build up until we need it. I recently wrote a whole article about how to get started using sinking funds (and why you should).

The amount in bold is the amount we added to the fund this month, followed by spending notes and the current balance of each fund.

To answer a question we often get, we do not have separate bank accounts for these funds. We had separate accounts many years ago when we first started budgeting but we learned that was overkill. Instead, all of the money sits in our checking account. Since we spend according to our budget category balances, not our checking account balance, we’re not worried about getting the money mixed up. We seriously never even look at our checking account balance unless we’re reconciling the account. We track our budget categories and spending in YNAB, a budgeting tool we absolutely adore. Yes, you can adore a budgeting tool. Don’t believe me? Try it out. If you have been using Credit Karma or something similar to manage your finances, you’ll want to read about our switch to budgeting with YNAB.

Medical/Dental – $500 added. We spent $71 on our monthly orthodontic payments for kid number three.  Current category balance is $2,563 

Car Maintenance – $400 added.  In October we spent $80 on an oil change for the minivan. Current category balance is $2,970.

Christmas – $200 added. I didn’t spend anything on Christmas 2025 during October. Current category balance is $1,922.

Disability Insurance- $190 added We set aside money each month for disability insurance so that when the annual premium is due we have the money ready. If Mike is unable to do his work as an attorney due to illness or injury, this disability insurance will replace about 60% of his current income. Since our income potential is our greatest financial asset right now, we have disability insurance to help us protect it.  We paid the balance in March and are now saving for next year. Current category balance is $1,482.

Life Insurance – $150 added. Our life insurance premiums are due each November, so we set aside a portion of the estimated total each month which will go toward next year’s premium. Current category balance is $1,147.

Birthdays & Gifts – $50 added. We spent $65 on a birthday outing with friends. Current category balance is $253.

Car Registration & Smog – $50 added. We didn’t spend anything here. Current category balance is $321.

Family Fun Fund – $32 added. We didn’t spend from our family fun category in October.  Current category balance is $116.

Home Improvement – $0 added. We didn’t add to or spend from this category in October.   Current category balance is $0.

Big Trips – $500 added. In October we spent $1,227 to pay for travel insurance, transportation, cash, and a few other things in preparation for a trip that Mike and I were planning. I’ll tell you about it soon! Current category balance is $0.

Swim Team 2026 – $100 added. I started a sinking fund to start saving up for swim team next year. It will be nicer to have the money all set aside when the early spring registration rolls around next year rather than having to come up with the ~$1,200 in  the month it’s due. Current category balance is $700.

Investing

Kids’ 529s – $150 added. Investing just $25 per child per month for college isn’t much, but we are okay with that. Neither of us had much college savings when we went to college, but with scholarships, grants, loans, and jobs during school we were able to get our undergraduate degrees without debt. We may contribute more later, but right now we’re happy with small, consistent contributions.  I looked at the balances recently and was pleased to see that this small contribution that is barely noticeable in our monthly budget has added up and grown to over $25,000! If you want to know more you can read about how we decided to start 529s for our kids.

IRA (Steph) – $583 added. With this same amount each month, I will reach my $7,000 IRA contribution for 2025.

Investment property – $1,202 We recently bought an investment property. Right now we are putting money into it, including paying the mortgage until it gets to the point where it covers its own expenses. The amount listed here is the money that came out of our family budget to go toward the new property. We financed the purchase with a home equity loan that was larger than the actual purchase price. The extra portion is to cover expenses until the property pays for itself, including some of the eventual cost of putting a permanent home on the property. All costs beyond the $1,202 from our family budget came out of the additional amount.

Income Earned in October- $16,800

The categories above show everything we spent and saved in October, which was with the money we had earned in September. At the same time we were also (of course) earning money during October. At the beginning of November, we set up our budget to allocate spending from this October income. I’ll share that spending next month.

This concept of getting a month ahead has made such a huge impact on our finances! It takes some work to get to the point where you are living on last month’s income, but the effort is completely worth it!

The income section below shows the money we earned in October, which we will use during November.

Attorney Income – $9,827 Mike works as an attorney for the state of California. This was his take-home pay after taxes, social security, his pension contribution, and health insurance premiums.

Rental Income – $500 We gave up our Airbnb rental to take in a Ukrainian refugee family for the past 2.5 years. In July of this year they started paying us some rent. We loved Airbnb and will likely go back to that in the future. If you’re thinking about renting out your space on Airbnb, check out this post where I describe how we earned far more than we expected with Airbnb.

Law Firm- $5,600  Before working for the state, Mike did estate planning and business transactional work. Over the last few years he has had a steady stream of potential clients, most of whom he refers to other attorneys, but he still occasionally helps former clients. He doesn’t write himself a paycheck each month, just a couple of times a year.

Blog – $0  I only pay myself a few times a year now. My blogging income took a major hit when I put the blog on the back burner during Covid to start homeschooling my kids. It is slowly recovering as I put more effort into posting regularly and all of the things I do behind the scenes. Thankfully the income still covers my fixed blogging expenses (which are a lot more than most people would guess) and allows me to pay myself a few times a year.

Child Care – $873 For the past two years I have been taking care of the 3-year-old of the Ukrainian family that we sponsor. The state pays for childcare while the mom is at work. It’s much less expensive and more convenient to have her stay with me than to bring her to a standalone child care facility.

Come back next month to see how we used this income to spend and save in November’s budget.

How’s Your Budget Working for YOU!?

That was a lot of words and numbers! Congratulations for making it all the way through our October 2025 family budget update!

Now we would love to hear from you!

Any questions on what or why we spend what we do?

What are your current financial goals?

Do you find that your budget is helping you reach your goals, or is it not working like you wish it was?

Let’s chat in the comments!

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