Mid-Year Financial Check-up

Mid-year is a great time to check-in on expenses, saving, and investments.  I find that my spending is irregular enough that while a monthly budget is a good guideline, an interval like 6 months is more accurate in terms of overall spending.  Looking at major categories, here is the summary along with steps taken for the second half of the year:

–Medical costs – medical costs (including self-employed insurance premiums) are becoming the largest area of the budget.  For the first 6 months, we are slightly over budget due to some costly Drs. visits.  For the rest of the year, I’ve found 2 ways to reduce costs: 1) is to use the insurance mail order plan for prescription medications.  The mail order plan saves about 40% in out-of-pocket costs and allows for 90-day instead of 30-day refills on long-term maintenance medications.  And 2) finding a different place for lab tests.  The differential that the provider that our physician uses and the other service is quite substantial for things like regular blood tests.

–Telecommunications — after studying the pattern of usage for the past 6 months, I’ve reduced the number of minutes on our monthly cell phone plan.  I also find myself using VOIP (Skype) more and more.  In fact, the next step may be to eliminate our fixed line phone altogether.  Except for about 1-2 faxes a year, I find that both my husband and I have shifted all of our telephone activities to cell or Skype.  I’d be interested in others that have done this.

--Restaurants — one of my major goals for this year was to reduce overall spending on restaurants.  In addition to cost savings, I find that food served at most restaurants are not particularly healthy.  In addition to using suspect oils and transfats, most of the food is chock full of sodium, high fructose corn syrup, and additives that I would never use in my kitchen.  What has worked this year is to go less frequently to restaurants, but to go to better restaurants that serve high quality food that I would not be able to prepare at home.  I’ve also tried to center meals out on special occasions like birthdays and when guests are here from out of town.  Overall, the less frequent, but more enjoyable, restaurant visits has kept our restaurant budget intact.

Investments – I am continuing to research investments for my retirement savings.  I haven’t made any major asset allocation moves, and still expect bond yields to rise, although perhaps later this year or early 2012.

How did others do in their mid-year financial review?

shared at this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance