Savings Plan Going A Little Haywire!

My fiance and I have multiple savings accounts set up at ING Direct. Each paycheck, we will contribute money to these accounts to help minimize getting trapped by expenses that only occur a few times per year. This is separate from our retirement savings. Here are examples of what we save for and typical amounts we put away each month:

Keep my wheels rolling fund - I contribute $300 a month to cover insurance, car registration, tires, maintenance, and repairs. My fiance has her own system for this one, so this is primarily used for me. I've spent at least a year at this trying to keep the balance above zero on this one due to the number of miles I drive, but I'm finally doing it.

Adventure fund - I contribute about $60 to $100 a month to cover all costs of vacation such as airfare, rental cars, hotels, meals and any fun things we do on vacation. My fiance typically contributes $100 a month to this one.

Wedding fund - I contribute $250 a month to save for everything wedding related. My fiance puts in $400 a month.

Roof over our heads fund - I contribute $50 a month to save up towards a down payment. My fiance contributes $100 per month. This isn't much, but it is slowly building. After the wedding is over, I imagine most of that monthly money will go in here.

Gifts fund - This fund is only used by me. I contribute $80 a month to this one to cover gifts for the year.

Furniture fund - I contribute $20 a month. My fiance does $100 a month now up from $20 a month previously. We moved into a new apartment two months ago and this has become a priority for her.

Clothing fund - I contribute $50 a month for suits, shoes and other work clothes.

We have some other funds that we contribute smaller amounts to but I'll cover that in another post.

Now the haywire part. Sometimes we go overbudget. For example, I may have $200 in my car fund, but incur a $300 repair bill. I put the $300 on a credit card and immediately paydown the $200 I have in savings. I keep track of this, and on my next paycheck I will contribute only $50, instead of $150 and use the $100 to pay off the credit card. This happened a lot last year for my car, but I am finally ahead. However, here is how much we are behind on some of the others:

Travel fund - Down $380. Our recent New York trip pushed us over the amount we had saved.

Gifts fund - Down $850. I considered the recent bachelor party a gift in addition to the tuxedos I had to rent for the two weddings I have coming up.

Clothing fund - Down $195. I bought a nice suit on sale in New York.

I am temporarily reallocating my contributions to help get these things paid down faster and am trying to cut back on spending so I can contribute extra to these. I am projecting that we will have these above water again by the end of October.

Ultimately, we are trying to get ahead on all of these accounts so that we always have a good base amount in each one. It is happening slowly, but it feels way better than what we were doing before which was : Don't save, buy now, figure out how to pay for it later.