July is the first month where I’ll be completely supporting myself with savings, and I’m so excited. I’ve worked a full-time job every summer starting at age 17, always having to turn down travel opportunities and be stressed about any vacation I did decide to take; always working so consistently that scheduling much needed doctors appointments was a hassle; never just taking the long stretches of time to feed into my other passions.
But this year’s different, because with two years of full-time teaching under my belt and a financial plan that worked, I’m able to live off of my savings and travel (with discretion during COVID-19), work on YouTube videos and blog posts, plan for next school year (as much as possible), learn daily, and not have the anxieties of work intruding on my daily life.
To recap my summer savings plan: I decided to live off of my normal salary and put my entire stipends (from coaching and advising the newspaper) towards my summer. This, coupled with $1,000 from my tax return and a portion of my final paycheck, would be sufficient to cover myself over two months. My strategy will be changing next year (blog post on this to come), but things worked out this first year, too. My plan to replace my income is to withdraw half of my savings in July and half in August, as well as split up my final paycheck. Here’s how it looks in my monthly budget:
When I originally created this budget, I had to estimate my final paycheck. I had no clue how much it would be, because it wasn’t a full two weeks of work, but it also wouldn’t include the typical 10-month deductions as my other paychecks. I estimated very conservatively that it would by around $700, or $350 per month.
I knew this was likely much lower than it would be, and I was right. It turns out that my final paycheck was $1,240. I thought about adding this money to July and August budgets, but when I considered that the extra $540 could be used to start my summer savings for next year, I decided to only use the $350 I originally estimated in these 2020 summer months. This will free up some cash ($54/month) for me in my monthly budgets next school year.
I’ll go into more depth on my changing summer savings and investment strategy in a future blog post, but you can get a sneak peek in the notes section of my budget 🙂
For more commentary on the ins-and-outs of this monthly budget, check out my YouTube video where I go through each catagorey:
Comment below (or on my YouTube video) with any questions. Happy summer everyone!
🙂 Rachel
P.S.
Remember, if you’re ready to get started with budgeting, use one of my free templates below!
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