Layout:
Home > This is why you don't budget all of the money in your account...

This is why you don't budget all of the money in your account...

June 17th, 2014 at 05:11 pm

Oops!! So this morning, when I logged in to check my accounts, I noticed my debit account is negative. I live pretty much paycheck to paycheck and since I'm throwing most of the money at debt, I have very little savings to fall back on and by the end of the time between pay periods, I usually have $20 or less in my checking account. This time I was actually going to have over $50, so imagine my surpise when I saw I was negative $43 bucks!!

I quickly realized that the automatic Capital One savings plan I'd set to take effect on the 10th for the 15th and 30th of the month had hit twice. I mistakenly thought activating the plan on the 10th meant it would begin taking out on the following 15th as planned...

Apparently not, it 'activated' on the 10th taking out 100 and then proceeded to take another 100 on the 15th as normally scheduled. My slush fund (the savings linked to my checking) only had $30 and I had $10 cash. I ended up moving money out of my car savings to my debit account with Capital One. I withdrew that $40 and put it into my checking. On Friday (payday), I will restore all balances to normal.

Phew, that was a close one...maybe I should work on a little buffer in my main account...

3 Responses to “This is why you don't budget all of the money in your account...”

  1. klarose Says:
    1403027798

    I ALWAYS leave a $500 buffer in my checking account, just for this reason. I pretend like it isn't even there so I am not tempted to spend it. I count it as $0. Eventually I would probably like to get up to a $1,000 buffer. Although I do also have $500 in a savings account linked to my checking that I could transfer is needed.

  2. Permanent Temp Says:
    1403033362

    I would try putting a $100 buffer in there if you want to keep the auto withdrawal. Or you could count it out of your monthly bills. Like when I balance my checkbook I take out all the bills when I put the money in including the auto transfer to my savings which saves me from a $5 fee each month.

    Stick to it it will work out.

    I would also work on a $500 EF that you can pull from in situations like this.

  3. Debt-free by Thir-ty Says:
    1403064863

    Klarose, I need to start doing this. I budget pretty exactly so I think 100 should be fine to start. I have some phenomenal news tomorrow (or later today) that may help with this.

    Permanent temp, I had it written into my budget, but I didn't realize they would take it twice. I figured it would take out on the first fifteenth after my start date. In hindsight, I probably should have caught this when 100 came out on the 10th. Like I mentioned above, I think I'm going to start leaving a $100 buffer in my account.

Leave a Reply

(Note: If you were logged in, we could automatically fill in these fields for you.)
*
Will not be published.
   

* Please spell out the number 4.  [ Why? ]

vB Code: You can use these tags: [b] [i] [u] [url] [email]