<< Back to all Blogs
Login or Create your own free blog
Layout:
Home > Revisiting Sinking Funds - share your thoughts

Revisiting Sinking Funds - share your thoughts

May 11th, 2015 at 06:45 pm

I am revisiting my Sinking Funds

I have:

1. A Slush Fund - this is made up of all our Once a year costs:
-Vet for Cat 1 ($200-250/year)
-Vet for Cat 2 ($200-250/year)
-Vet for Dog ($200-250/year)
-HOA Fee ($150/year)
-Sewer bill ($200/year approximately)
-Misc Insurance ($80/year)
-TOTAL $1180/year (put away $100/month).

2. Vacation Fund - $20/month - Only planning little long weekends from time to time

3. Home Upkeep/Repairs Fund - currently saving $50/month, but have utilized lately and balance is low.

4. Gifts fund - $60/month and is supplemented with 'free money' from Bing, rewards, etc. This covers birthdays, anniversarys, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween (costumes), wedding showers, baby showers, etc. We are extremely generous with the nieces/nephews and supplement sports and activities, so the 'costs' are a little higher than if we were just buying small presents.

5. Medical Fund - currently only $10/month. We have funds provided by work into an HSA and I put $33/check pretax in as well. It covers deductables, etc.

6. AAA/License Renewal/Inspection - $15/month


So we have had a lot of large home repairs, lately. However, what do you all budget for normal upkeep, repairs, etc? Do you have slush funds for this?

I am attempting to figure out the right number for our family.

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

5 Responses to “Revisiting Sinking Funds - share your thoughts”

  1. Petunia 100 Says:
    May 11th, 2015 at 08:37 pm 1431376667
    1431376667

    The rule of thumb for home maintenance/repairs is 1% of purchase price. Of course, if your home is older and your sinking fund is new, that may not be enough. Personally, I find the rule of thumb to be a good rule. That is about what I spend.

  2. creditcardfree Says:
    May 11th, 2015 at 09:56 pm 1431381361
    1431381361

    I don't actually budget for home maintenance. Simple things like furnace filters and lawn maintenance are just usually cash flowed. Even bigger expenses seem to go that way as well. If we have something we can't cash flow then yes the money comes from savings and we do our best to pay ourselves back.

  3. MonkeyMama Says:
    May 11th, 2015 at 10:25 pm 1431383126
    1431383126

    I have heard 1% - 3% home value for home maintenance sinking funds. Since we live in a higher cost region (higher than national Average) the 3% figure is absolutely ridiculous for us! We go with 1% because our home is fairly low maintenance. (That comes out to about $3k per year, for us. Which is far more than we have ever spent, but we save that much anyway because we expect bigger home repairs over the long run. I Expect we will eventually replace roof, windows, AC/HVAC and bigger items like that).

    I personally separate a more short-term slush fund (expenses expected within the year) and more long-term expenses like home repairs. The thinking behind this is probably because we've never had any consistent home expenses. We've gone years without spending much of anything, so we use a more long-term savings fund for home repairs. (It's really a car replacement/home repair fund. & whatever else we save for long-term, but those are really the biggies and then the cash is there for whatever else pops up).

  4. chloe Says:
    May 11th, 2015 at 11:41 pm 1431387710
    1431387710

    I have basically the same funds that you do, except not a gift fund or a AAA/etc fund. I would at least move this AAA/etc fund into the the slush fund, since it also contains non-monthly expenses. That would simplify things a little!

    For home maintenance/repairs, I save 1.5% of my home's value over the course of the year into a home maintenance account. For us this is $400/month. I don't pull from this account for small things I can buy with regular cash flow, but for larger expenses. In our first year of home ownership, we spent much more than this 1.5%, since we had to repoint our chimney, replace the water heater, and make multiple roof repairs. (We were sure grateful to not have drained our emergency fund to buy the house!) Since then the fund has started to build up, although I have quite a few maintenance plans for this year as well.

    Does anyone else have trouble spelling maintenance? I sure do! Thank goodness for spell check! Smile

  5. LivingAlmostLarge Says:
    May 12th, 2015 at 01:17 am 1431393446
    1431393446

    We've easily spend 1% a year on home repairs with some years like this one being ridiculously more than other years. It averages out but it really does occur around that number.

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]