Thanks for tuning in again for our fourth blog, which will be the last “introductory” post - moving forward, we’ll be sharing progress of the conversion! Stick with us for this post, though, as we cover one of the most important topics yet: budget. Tanner and I are huge budgeters - each month, we allocate every dollar to a specific category and track our savings. I find genuine joy in reconciling our accounts, correcting our overspending, assigning dollars for next month, etc. I could talk about my love of budgeting all day, but sharing the actual numbers gives me some real anxiety. So please, bear with us as we try to be transparent through this process :) For the initial commitment (buying the van), we set our maximum budget at $8,500. We had been setting a portion of our income aside to buy a home, which is where most of the cash came from. We spent an afternoon moving around dollars from various budget categories to come up with the total. After doing a lot of research about the cost of converting, we settled at an all-in cost of $15,000. Once you exclude the amount for the vehicle, there is a leftover $6,500 to go toward to conversion. The step van, however, came in at $750 under our max budget… so really the conversion budget comes out to $7,250. Wanting to be strategic with the money that we have, and not shoot ourselves in the foot should any emergencies occur, we did not commit an additional $7,250 of our savings to the van. Rather, we’ve projected our savings over the next six months to reach that goal. We have an idea about the big ticket items and what they’ll cost. Adding AC to the van? Probably about $2,000. Adding a solar kit? Estimating about $1,500. A compressor fridge? Hoping for less than $500. Ventilation fan? $250. That leaves us with about $3,000 for other items that are mostly up in the air - we’ll do what we can with our budget, and opt out on things that take us over. We recognize that we might run into issues, or we may be completely off on some of our estimates (knock on wood). Also, it’s been important for us to remember that life happens - emergencies could occur that set us off of our timeline, if not entirely. Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. James 4:14 At the end of the day, we’re taking a chance with this opportunity because life is short. If we aren’t promised tomorrow, then we ought to live today! Alright, so that covers it! We can’t wait to come back to this post when it’s all said and done. We’ll either be impressed with ourselves or humbled by our failure to predict costs. We do want to give a shout out to YNAB.com - we have used the site/app for budgeting since we got married, and 10/10 would recommend. Next up, we’ll begin to share the progress we’re making on the conversion.
Till next time! The Phillips Pack
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