If you’re new to my blog you will quickly learn that a primary topic that motivated my desire to start this blog was money – specifically my student loan journey. A big part of my life has been budgeting and money tracking. I have always been a tracker of my spending habits and I love creating budgets in order to reach my financial goals. I am very debt averse which why I’ve been so motivated to aggressively pay off my student loans.
This post is about my 2022 budget, I will be sharing my overall budget and financial goals.
This year, I want to focus on contributing to my TFSA and RRSP. For the past few years I have been making large payments towards my student loans. Since we have rolled my balance into our mortgage for our condo I have been making the same contributions towards our mortgage and will continue to do so until 2023 when that balance will have been paid off.
There are a number of things that have changed since last year when I was trying to compile my budget for 2021. While we are still in this wretched pandemic, there are some life changes which will certainly change the way I prepare my 2022 budget going forward. In terms of life changes I am thankfully making more than I did a year ago which will certainly affect my budget. In addition, I have decided to purchase a car which will also add some expenses to my budget.
Here is my 2022 monthly budget:
Phone $100.00
I have a pretty good phone plan but decided to get a new phone last year which I am making payments on. I am on a 2 year tab and I am still grappling with potentially paying off the phone tab but given the low monthly cost in relation to everything else I am fine to leave it as it for the time being.
Car Payment $450.00
I also got my first car late last year and decided to finance it for 4 years. This is my monthly payment.
Insurance $200.00
This is the cost of my car insurance, again I am still waiting for the delivery of my car so for the first two months of the year there will be no funds allocated to this and the preceding category.
EDIT: I decided to make a lump sum payment for the entire year so this amount will no longer be included in my month to month budget.
RRSP + TFSA $1,200.00
I have set up auto withdrawals for these two categories to make it a lot simpler for myself this year. My new job comes with a non-contributory pension which certainly alleviates any retirement saving anxiety I had (I know I know I have years and years left of working ha!). My new employer will also be matching my RRSP contributions up to a certain percentage of my salary so I will be taking full advantage of this.
Subscriptions $200
This is going to seem a bit high but here are some changes this year. I re-joined Orange Theory which is a big chunk of this amount. I don’t intend on having a membership for the full year but I do intend on allocating an amount for fitness memberships for the entire year. Other things that are included in this budget is my icloud subscription (blogger life), my spotify account and lastly my Hayu account (reality show analyst over here!).
Food (going out to eat, groceries, etc) $600
I know this is probably higher than normal but the truth is, I love food and I am an avid baker so this budget will capture any cake ingredients that I purchase for any desserts (which I usually make as gifts for people). Also because I work from home, I find that I crave going out more even if its just for a meal. I also split groceries with my husband so this is essentially captures my portion of our groceries along with my meals out with friends. One thing I have been pretty good with so far this year is coffees. I used to have a coffee spending tracker and so far I have not felt the need to buy a coffee/Starbucks drink while out in a long time. Part of this is as a result of the lock down and also I find that I am more inclined to purchase Starbucks drinks in the summer rather than in the winter.
Clothing $250
I need to be realistic with myself and set aside an amount for clothing every month. So far this year I have not gone on any shopping sprees. I am trying to avoid any unnecessary and excessive shopping sprees this year as I tend to wear the same pieces over and over again. I also find that since I have switched over to buying more expensive and quality pieces, I don’t feel the need to replace my basics as often and I also find that I am less inclined to buy a bulk of things just due to the sheer cost.
Summary
And that concludes my 2022 budget! These are just the regular line items that appear year after year on my budget. There are always things that may be unexpected that I usually just keep track of in a “miscellaneous” category. Thankfully, prior to this post I had the benefit of testing out this budget for the first couple of months and it is working well so far! The categories I am trying to pay attention to are food and clothing as those are the areas that I tend to over spend. So far, I have been under budget for clothing, unfortunately can’t say the same about food. I will continue to post my monthly spending and favourites post in order to keep myself accountable and honest.
Let me know what your “problem” categories of your budget are in the comments!
