So it is the beginning of a new month and I got a raise!!! We are paid minimally as teaching assistants but it was announced that this semester we will be getting a small increase in our salary.

I know in the financial world we tell everyone that they should not practice lifestyle inflation. Lifestyle inflation occurs when you get a raise and also increase your budgets to reflect that raise. However I have been living on a very tight budget recently and this raise allows me to add $50 to my expenses for the month.

img. from rte.ie

img. from rte.ie

So I will be increasing my budget by $50 total…spread out across five budget categories as follows:

-House

-Food

-Household shopping

-Utilities

-Miscellaneous

I am increasing food and household shopping by $10 each, which really is not much in the grand scheme of things. Now that I have a room mate once again I think the utilities will increase because this person does not follow the same practices that I do when it comes to those things.

I included the miscellaneous category as well to catch all the things that do not definitely fit into the top categories.

You will notice that I did not increase the car budget. This is because I have been able to stay under the gas budget since I can take the bus most of the time to class. When I have gone over the maintenance section of the car budget I just roll the balance from the gas over and this usually covers everything.

After increasing the budget for the month by $50 I have just a tiny amount going to savings as an increase over what I was saving in the past.