Transparent Budget Update- April 2026

I’m still doing some catching up with sharing budget updates. Thankfully, I keep our budget pretty well up-to-date in YNAB even if I’m slow to post the updates on my website.

We’ve had some financial challenges recently (with more on the horizon) that have had me feeling stressed. Still, the thought of facing these challenges without a budget would make my stress level go through the roof.

In good times and bad, I’m thankful for the peace that comes from having a plan for our money. Budgeting for the win!

Here’s our transparent family budget update from April!

Spending in April

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 April 1st exactly how much money we had earned and received between March 1 and March 31, so we knew exactly how much we could spend between April 1 and April 30. On April 1st, we start the April budget by taking everything we earned in March and assigning it to our April budget categories.

We can’t see the future, so on the first of April, 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 April 1st guesses dictate what we can and can’t do all during the month. The important thing is to not spend more total in April than we earned in March.

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 April spending for all of our budget categories.

Giving

Tithing – $1,570 We start out the month paying a 10% tithe on our income. Like all of our April spending, our tithing is calculated on what we earned in March. 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.

Other Giving – $50 We set a little aside to help some friends.

Monthly Bills

Mortgage – $2,999 Our mortgage is $3,499 each month now. The escrow portion of our payment just increased by over a thousand dollars to accommodate a massive increase to our annual home owners insurance. Our Ukrainian neighbors contribute $500 per month. 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 (details of that here.) We currently have $131,135 remaining on our mortgage.

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

Electricity – $6 Three 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 unavoidable fee (which has gone up) for most of the year, then in December we have our “true-up” which is the difference between what we’ve used and what we’ve produced over the year. I’m working on writing up a detailed analysis of whether solar was worth it for us. I was hoping to have it published by now, but I passed it onto Mike who is both busy and devoted to details.

Car Insurance – $465 We have four vehicles with two adult drivers and two teen drivers.

Internet – $110 We have cable internet through Comcast. When we bought our home nine 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 – $75 Our water bill comes every other month. In March we set aside about half of what we expect the next bill to be.

Garbage- $59 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 – $321 We bought another phone (~$200) to be our home phone. We used an old phone (without a plan) as a home phone for a long time, but we misplaced it (and it was really getting to be a dinosaur), so we replaced it. We haven’t decided if we will keep it on a plan or if we will just use it on our wifi using WhatsApp to call. Mike is on the annual plan, so we will pay 4 phone bills per month, though I started putting his $25/month here too so that when his annual plan renews, there will be a chunk here in this category. Our phones are all through Visible. Visible is a Verizon subsidiary that offers no-contract plans with wifi calling, unlimited cell calls, and unlimited calls and 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 last 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 – $580 We are a family of 8 including 3 athletic teens. We were only home 3 weeks out of the month, which is why the spending is so low. 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. Want to see what our average grocery spending was last year (and how it has changed over the past several years) check out this recent post. 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 – $413 Gas prices in April were $5.50, but we were only home for 3 weeks out of the month, so our spending was lower than normal.

Household Misc – $653 This includes our normal toiletries, household things, and subscriptions, but this is way higher than normal thanks to a new vacuum that Mike purchased after getting frustrated with our old one.

Clothing – $0 – We didn’t spend anything on clothes or shoes in April, but I have some purchases in mind for May!

Animals – $0 We bought dog and cat food in April.

Allowances – $157 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.

Sports – $41 We had to pay a participation fee for middle school sports and entrance fees/parking for a high school track meet.

College – $110 I started collecting things the our oldest will need when she goes off to college, like bathroom and laundry things. I plan to give some of them to her as a graduation gift.

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 EveryDollar or something similar to manage your finances, you’ll want to read about our switch to budgeting with YNAB.

Medical/Dental – $750 added. We spent $571 on medical/dental expenses in April (not including the $3,200 that we used from our emergency fund for this unfortunate accident). We added more to this category than normal since we know the expenses are going to continue as our son continues treatment. Current category balance is $2,361.

Car Maintenance – $350 added. We spent $0 in April. Current category balance is $5,192.

Christmas – $200 added. We haven’t spent anything from our Christmas 2026 budget yet. Current category balance is $800.

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. The annual payment was $2,000 in March, so now we’re saving for our March 2027 payment. Current category balance is $622.

Life Insurance – $125 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 $625.

Birthdays & Gifts – $75 added. We spent $0 in April. Current category balance is $328.

Car Registration & Smog – $50 added. We spent $0 in April. Current category balance is $284.

Family Fun Fund – $0 added. This is the category where saved for our family’s Cuba trip. You can see our trip budget here. We had a few Cuba-related expenses come out in April. I will be posting our complete spending report soon. I also went on a zoo field trip with the younger three kids. Current category balance is $921.

Home Improvement – $700 added. We started an emergency bathroom project at the end of November that involved completely gutting our kids’/guest bathroom. We haven’t made it very far yet, but it will be a DIY project that we hadn’t planned on or budgeted for. We didn’t touch this project in April. It will have to wait until after our Cuba trip. Current category balance is $941.

Swim Team 2026 – $125 added. Last year I started a sinking fund to start saving up for summer swim team. It was nice to have the money ($1,300 for 4 swimmers) saved up when registration was due. We are back to saving up for next year. Current category balance is $125.

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 $27,000! If you want to know more you can read about how we decided to start 529s for our kids.

IRA (Steph) – $625 added. With this same amount each month, I will reach my $7,500 IRA contribution for 2026.

Investment property – $2,383 Last summer we 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. Our monthly costs on the property includes the mortgage payment of $2,339 and the cost of trash service and internet. We get $700 from our RV renter that goes toward this and we cover the rest from other funds until we get a permanent rental home on the property. In April we put some extra toward our investment property knowing we will have some large upcoming expenses before it will be rentable.

Income Earned in April- $10,684

The categories above show everything we spent and saved in April, which was using the money we had earned in March. At the same time we were also earning money during April. At the beginning of May, we set up our budget to allocate spending from this April income. I’ll share that spending in June.

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 April, and will used in May.

Attorney Income – $9,903 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.

Law Firm- $0 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 also 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 – $781 For the past two years I have been taking care of the 4-year-old of the Ukrainian family that we sponsor. There is a community organization that 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 May’s budget.