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Managing The Miscellaneous Budget Category

By Jason Price 2 Comments - The content of this website often contains affiliate links and I may be compensated if you buy through those links (at no cost to you!). Learn more about how we make money. Last edited February 23, 2011.

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You may agree the miscellaneous budget category can be one of the most challenging categories to manage and can turn your budget upside down if not carefully managed. I’ve wrestled with it in the past, trying to get these expenses under control, and it’s sometimes still a challenge even if you’re not trying to create a budget for the first time.

Quick Navigation

  • What Is The Miscellaneous Budget Category?
  • Why Are Miscellaneous Expenses So Challenging To Manage?
  • Plan For Miscellaneous Spending
  • Build A Savings Buffer
  • Make Big Expenses Small
  • Use Software
  • Reduce Spending

What Is The Miscellaneous Budget Category?

Why is it so challenging? Well, let’s first start with a definition of the miscellaneous budget category. It’s the budget category that captures all expenses that cannot be assigned to common budget categories such as Food, Clothing, Entertainment, etc. It’s sort of the catch all budget category and can include monthly, periodic or yearly expenses. Examples of miscellaneous expenses in my budget include birthdays, other gifts, Christmas gifts and decorations, household, toiletry, diapers/baby supplies, dry cleaning, magazine subscriptions and many more.

Why Are Miscellaneous Expenses So Challenging To Manage?

People often forget about miscellaneous spending or fail to communicate about it. Even though my wife and I have regular conversations about money, we often find we have a new miscellaneous expenses occur in the middle of the month which weren’t planned. It’s also hard to identify all the expenses that should be associated to this category. Each year might present new expenses and it’s easy to forget about them. Many people don’t plan enough in this area of spending which often can lead to the use of credit card to meet their needs.

So, how do you manage miscellaneous spending? While I’ve wrestled with this budget category, I’ve come to learn a number of tips that can help you avoid surprises.

Plan For Miscellaneous Spending

Try brainstorming such expenses at the beginning of the year to make sure they’re included in your budget. At the same time, review them each month to include additional expenses that may be new. If you have a major change in your life such as a child birth, you can bet new miscellaneous expenses will be lurking near by.

Build A Savings Buffer

Try to build up a buffer of one year in advance to meet these expenses. Certainly, this is challenging and is easier said than done. For those expenses that occur periodically, or once a year, you may find them easier to manage with some cushion in your budget. How do you do this? Well, it takes time, but try to save more for them than what is required. For example, if your Family Birthday budget category is $200 per year, try to save $225.

Make Big Expenses Small

You can further plan this spending by identifying expenses that occur monthly and the ones that occur yearly. For the yearly expenses, add them up and divide by 12 to get to a monthly amount to budget. This makes those big expenses smaller and easier to manage. You can then turn them into monthly expenses you start saving for now.

Use Software

Use software to keep track of miscellaneous expenses. There is a lot of free money management software available on the internet, such as Mint.com, that can help you monitor these expenses, add them to an online budget and track spending to them. While many people keep their budgets at a high level, I like leveraging software to help me track more detail around these expenses so I can eliminate the surprises.

The Great Big List Of 75 Budgeting Tools & Finance Software

Reduce Spending

Finally, consider the positive side of miscellaneous expenses. Many times these expenses aren’t always the most critical in your budget. If you’re tracking them closely you can review them to determine where you can make spending cuts. Not being aware of these expenses means you’ll just keep spending for them.

How do you manage your miscellaneous expenses?

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Last Edited: 23rd February 2011 The content of biblemoneymatters.com is for general information purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Visitors to biblemoneymatters.com should not act upon the content or information without first seeking appropriate professional advice. In accordance with the latest FTC guidelines, we declare that we have a financial relationship with every company mentioned on this site.

This article is about: Budget, Planning

About Jason Price

Lead tech projects by day - write about money at night. I'm on the journey to financial freedom so I can give more of the resources entrusted to my care. Read more at jasonrprice.com or connect with me on Twitter.

Comments

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  1. Money Beagle says

    As long as the miscellaneous items are not too big and not too frequent, we find that a savings buffer takes care of these.

    On a side note, please consider remove the pop up ad. There are less intrusive ways to monetize.

    Reply
  2. TexasT says

    I agree with your method, and I have a tab in my budget spreadsheet devoted to these “extra-ordinary expenses”. It changes each year, but it’s a good indicator of what to expect. I total it up and divide by 12 to come up with a number to save each month on average.

    Reply
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