Between August 4 and August 18, our checking account paid for a termite bond, fall soccer registration, two tires and a school supply list, and I said "Where did all this come from?" out loud at least four times.
The embarrassing part is that none of it was a surprise. We bought our house in August 2017, and the termite bond has renewed every August since. Fall soccer registration is due every summer. My RAV4 does 15,000 miles a year, so tires were a question of when, not if. And school started August 6, the way it starts the first week of August every single year.
Here's what those two weeks cost:
- Termite bond renewal: $336
- Soccer registration and new cleats: $165
- Two tires for the RAV4: $318
- School supplies: $96
That's $915 in two weeks, against a "sinking funds" line in our budget that was $150 a month. Back in April I admitted that line was doing a lot of pretending. August called its bluff.
When I worked in HR, payroll advance requests arrived in waves: August and December, almost every year. Those weren't emergencies either. They were calendars.
How we got to $385
I went back through the last twelve tabs of our budget spreadsheet and pulled out every bill that doesn't come monthly. Then I added up each one for a year and divided by twelve. No envelopes and no special system, just a list and a calculator.
| Bill | Per year | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Car maintenance (oil changes, tires, brakes) | $1,800 | $150 |
| Christmas | $1,200 | $100 |
| Soccer and piano fees (registration, uniform, recital, books) | $420 | $35 |
| Car tags and registration, both cars | $360 | $30 |
| Termite bond | $336 | $28 |
| Harper's birthday | $300 | $25 |
| Amazon and Costco memberships | $204 | $17 |
| Total | $4,620 | $385 |
School supplies didn't make the list. They're one August errand that fits in the regular budget, and I wanted the sinking fund list short enough to remember without looking.
How it works in our house
- On the first of each month, $385 moves automatically into a separate savings account. It is not the emergency fund, and the two never mix. Our paychecks come every other Friday, but these bills think in months, so the transfer does too.
- Our spreadsheet has a tab called Sinking with a running balance for each bucket.
- When one of these bills comes, I pay it from checking like normal, then move the same amount back from the sinking account that day.
- Only bills on the list count. A sale at LOFT is not a sinking-fund bill, no matter how I phrase it.
The $385 replaced the old $150 line, so the budget needed $235 more a month. That part was easier than it sounds. These bills were getting paid anyway, out of whatever was sitting in checking that month, which meant our end-of-month sweep to savings kept shrinking in August and December. Now the money goes to the right place before it's needed instead of making a round trip.
The first year has one catch. Christmas is three months away, and at $100 a month the Christmas bucket will only hold $400 by December. So I seeded it once with $800 from savings, and the other buckets will fill on their own schedule. The termite bucket starts at zero and gets twelve deposits before next August, which is exactly enough.
Ben's review of the whole system: "So we're paying for Christmas in September." Yes. Harper wanted to know whether her birthday bucket was bigger than Moose's. Moose doesn't have a bucket, and she considers that a scandal.
The first test came two weeks in: $48 for new piano books and the fall recital fee. I paid it from checking, moved $48 back from the sinking account and closed the laptop. No sigh, no shuffling, no deciding which other line had to give. I promise y'all that is the least exciting thing that has ever made me this happy.
September is the first month of the new setup, so I'll know by December whether Christmas feels different. I suspect it will.
This is what fits our bills and our calendar, and your list will look different. It's our setup, not financial advice.
