What are some of the most common things people forget to budget for?
Whether you’re putting together a household budget for the first time, or are old hat at budgeting, there’s always something that gets missed. If you’re looking for tips to make this year your best yet, financially speaking, make sure you have these 5 commonly forgotten expenses in your plan.
Getting hit with a missed expense can throw your whole budget out of whack. Fortunately, if you include the following 5 items in your budget, you’ll be better prepared than most.
Let’s take a look.
5 Common Expenses You Might Have Forgotten In Your Budget
Maybe you’ve already planned for all of these items, if you’re a pro. But odds are, there’s at least one of these you’ve forgotten or skipped in your budget.
1. Yearly subscription renewals
Annual fees are one of the toughest expenses to remember and anticipate, since they only come around once a year.
Keeping track of all your subscriptions – from Amazon Prime to Netflix to cloud storage – can be tricky, especially as more and more parts of our lives move to as-a-service models, where fees are deducted automatically each year.
Doing an audit of all your annual subscriptions and when they’ll renew can help you stay on top of your budget throughout the year. And, as a bonus, discovering forgotten subscriptions and cancelling them before they renew can help you save serious bucks.
There are a few ways to stay on top of this. Many banks’ online platforms have tools to help you identify recurring expenses. You can also use a service, like Rocket Money or similar programs, or you can take a DIY approach and make a list of all your services and subscriptions and add calendar reminders for yourself before they renew.
2. Expected and unexpected vehicle costs
Even for serious long term budgeters, vehicle-related costs are often named among the most commonly forgotten or underestimated expenses.
Vehicle costs to build into your budget include:
Car registration fees and inspections
Emissions tests
License renewals
Maintenance costs
Toll passes
Parking
Budget for unexpected tickets and fines
Most people consider gas, insurance, and monthly car payments, but might forget some of the auxiliary costs of vehicle ownership. While some of these costs are bigger than others, they can really add up over the course of the year. Vehicle registration renewal fees in particular always seem to sneak up, don’t they?
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3. Special events
Another commonly missed expense category for even seasoned budgeters is special events and celebrations. This can include weddings, baby showers, birthdays, anniversaries, retirement parties, and so on. While you’ll likely know if you yourself will be having any of these this year, it’s everyone else you have to remember to account for.
You may not be able to predict whether any of your loved ones will have a milestone this year, but earmarking a little money for gifts, travel, special occasion clothing, and so on can make it less of a shock to your wallet if a beloved cousin or former coworker pops up with a big announcement and an invitation.
4. Fun & entertainment
Yes, you read that right! You have to budget for things that make you happy. And that’s not just a fun suggestion – it’s backed by financial psychology. If you don’t include any splurges or small joys in your budget, you’ll be more likely to go off track with a big splurge at some point in the year.
It’s better to give yourself little treats – even if you’re on a tight budget – and build them into your financial planning than rely on maintaining exceptional self-control. Self-control is sort of like an elastic band – the further you stretch it and the longer you keep it stretched, the more likely it is to break or snap. Plus, everyone deserves a little happiness! Budgets are ultimately blueprints for your life for a given time period, and you want to make sure you’re building a good life.
5. General contingency
When producers budget for film and theater, one of the first things they learn is to add roughly 10% of the total projected budget for general contingency. Contingency is basically your margin of error to account for things going wrong, budgeting errors, prices going up, emergencies, last minute splurges, anything that could cause you to go over budget.
The same applies to personal finance. As this list demonstrates, there are simply so many things you can’t predict in a given year. Your car could break down. You could forget to cancel National Geographic (guilty). Your cousin could get married or your favorite professor could retire. While trying to be precise with your budget is always a good idea, recognizing that anything can happen and building it into your financial plan can give you peace of mind and help you stay afloat.
Contingency can overlap with your emergency fund (you remembered to include an emergency fund in your budget, right?), but is really something else entirely. You don’t want to be left with less money for surprise medical expenses because the cost of an annual subscription went up and your sister is having a baby! Contingency is for all the little surprises you can’t anticipate.
And those are 5 of the most commonly forgotten expense items for personal budgets.
Did you find anything you’d missed? Are you ready to put the finishing touches on your next budget? Inflation is up and costs are high for the average American, but with great planning, you can stay financially solvent and live well.
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