Something Extra to be Thankful For

Posted on | November 27, 2007 |

I know that Thanksgiving is now just a distant, pleasant memory for most but I hope you’ll forgive me for my belated Thanksgiving post.

I’ve just been looking over my YNAB budget* and discovered an unforeseen benefit of the holiday — a lower gasoline bill this month.  With The Daughter being out of school for a whole week and The homeschooled Son not having classes, lessons, or rehearsal, and neither child having games or team practices, I estimate that the holiday saved me somewhere in the neighborhood of $60-75 worth of gas for The Tank.

In the spirit of sticking to YNAB’s Four Rules (specifically, Rule #2:  Give Every Dollar a Job), I’ve moved those $$’s originally budgeted to Auto: Fuel over to my Gifts categories where I’m sure they’ll be put to use (or more honestly, where they’ve already been put to use).

I’m already anticipating what the two-week school and activity vacation at Christmas/New Year’s will do for my gas budget (and, as a result, my gift budget).  Don’t get me wrong, though — I’m not pumping additional $$’s into my gift budget and planning purchases I hadn’t already budgeted for.  My gift list remains the same.  All I’m doing is taking real dollars that won’t be spent on gas and allocating them to gifts; before the gasoline windfall was discovered, the funds for gifts were coming out of other discretionary budget categories such as vacation and savings.

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