The other day, my husband popped into our banking app to check the balance on our shared credit card. This card is where we charge all our family’s joint expenses. His jaw dropped.
“We are majorly over our budget,” he said. “Groceries are high, but not this high.”
We got out some paper and went line-by-line, itemizing the charges. Turns out a handful of membership fees had all renewed in August, eating into our budget by a couple hundred dollars.
These are memberships we want to keep, so we decided to set up a sinking fund to cover the costs throughout the year.
💳 Here’s the math:
- AAA, for all those inconvenient car issues: $103/year
- Dropbox, for our cloud storage where we keep shared documents and photos: $120/year
- Credit card rewards fee, for all those travel points: $95/year
- Amazon Prime, for shopping convenience: $139/year
- Warehouse memberships: Costco Executive ($130) and Sam’s Club basic membership ($60) for a combined $190/year
That’s $647 for the year — or roughly $54 per month. If we divide that number in half, we get our individual contributions: $27.
We set up recurring, automatic transfers each month for $27 each directly into our new "memberships" sinking fund. We keep our money in a high-yield savings account. I love that we earn interest on our savings. Plus, our account lets us label each savings bucket so its not all lumped together. When I log in, I know exactly how much we've saved toward each goal.
After breaking down the total membership costs into smaller chunks, we both felt the stress melt away a bit. Our memberships help our household run smoothly, and it feels good to know we can save for them over time. Now, this time next year, we won’t be shocked when we pull up our credit card balance — we’ll be prepared.
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