Our September 2025 Budget in Percentages | Family of 4
September was a full month. It kicked off with an impromptu visit from one of my high school friends and her family. They stayed two nights, we ate great food, went on a beautiful hike, checked out a new brewery, and cut cardboard with a saw (don’t ask!). Later in the month, we took a long weekend trip to the beach to celebrate an old college friend’s upcoming wedding. The rest of the weekends were filled with kid birthday parties and brunch at our house. H also started preschool (three mornings a week) and E was back in school, which means I finally had a few kid-free hours during the day after a summer spent together 24/7.
Spending Overview
Even with travel and hosting, we spent less than expected thanks to some incredibly generous friends who covered meals, lodging, and a few treats along the way.
This is the time of year when our electric bill typically creeps over budget thanks to late summer heat. We also had a bit of extra income, a small tax relief payment, escrow overage, and a refund from returning some clothes (which explains the “clothing income” category in the chart below).
Highlights
Savings rate: 13%, which is higher than usual for us! We put some of the money into the kids’ 529 plans and the rest into our travel fund for a wedding trip to Annapolis next spring.
Top three spending categories: Mortgage (26%), Groceries (20%), and Taxes (10%). Mortgage and groceries are our usual big two, and the tax payment was for my planned Q3 estimated payment for business income.
Electric bill: Slightly above budget. I covered the $66 difference by pulling from our food category.
Irregular bills: Water, garbage, pest control, and AAA all hit this month. We pulled those from our sinking funds in savings and replenished savings for future irregular bills coming later this year.
Reflections
Overall, nothing too surprising this month. I’m noticing how much easier it feels to handle seasonal or one-off expenses now that we have a little more breathing room in our budget. Plus our sinking funds savings account has been going for quite some time now which makes all the irregular bills fit seamlessly into our spending.
If you’d like to see a detailed week of our September 2025 spending, you can check that out here.
Next up: October, which means costumes! Mike and I are actually going to a Halloween party (sans kids!) for the first time in years. Neither of us are big costume people, so I’m guessing we’ll keep it simple… stay tuned.
