Budgeting

[PrincessHeather]

The best way for me to save money is just to have amnesty days where I commit to spending NO money. That's usually Monday,Wednesday, and Thursday. No quick trips to the store, no trips to the ATM, no eating out, nothing. Whatever I don't have, I just make do without for those 24 hours. That also freezes impulse buying and by the next day the urge to splurge is usually gone. This also forces me to plan ahead (make sure I have food, gas, pet stuff etc). By forcing myself to plan it also forces me to budget.

My husband and I used to do this with some amount of sucess... We shall try this again for September I think. We structured only slightly differently, in that we would set a goal for 15 days of the month to be "no spending days". So every day we essentially had a little challenge for ourselves to not spend, and it formed a habit to not spend much in general. We've gotten off track, so I think I'll mention this old strategy tonight and see what hubby says.

[Kristen]

The envelope method!

Carrying actual cash and envelopes is kind of impractical, so I use an app:

https://www.eebacanhelp.com/index.php

I have it on my phone, always with me, so in the middle of a pay period I can look at say, my groceries envelope and there's $35. Well, that's my budget for this shopping trip.

I set up both regular envelopes that I refill each paycheck, and "irregular" envelopes that I fill gradually but don't necessarily empty during each pay period. Regular envelopes are things like groceries, gas, personal (hair and toiletries), fun (concerts, movies, violin strings), vacation; some of my irregular envelopes are car maintenance, Christmas gifts, clothing, uniforms, and I also use them for saving up for specific purchases--like a new guitar or computer.

It's a great little app. It's allowed me to put a decent amount of money in savings, buy some nice things I wouldn't have otherwise been able to afford, and avoid those irritating surprise expenses that drain my bank account until the next paycheck.

[Leimanu]

I feel like I have some kind of Depression-era mind sent, because I still use envelopes (2, one for weekly groceries, one for weekly gas). That works out well because I get tips so I can put the cash right in there weekly. I also try to sit and do finances once a week, at least to just look at the check book. This is a recent thing. but it's time to file or update the check book and credit card uses. Also, just a simple old Excel spreadsheet.

[Elastigirl]

I feel like I have some kind of Depression-era mind sent, because I still use envelopes (2, one for weekly groceries, one for weekly gas). That works out well because I get tips so I can put the cash right in there weekly. I also try to sit and do finances once a week, at least to just look at the check book. This is a recent thing. but it's time to file or update the check book and credit card uses. Also, just a simple old Excel spreadsheet.

Love the envelope system! We do it now because we follow Dave Ramsey's plan. But growing up, I remember the envelope system was what my mom always used. If I want to go out and eat, I look iin the envelope. If we have money great, I can eat out, no money, guess I better find something at home to eat

[Rexxar Txan]

I am going to make this my level up your life goal for the next 6w challenge. I am terrible at doing this. I've tried unsuccessfully using an excel spreadsheet as I can't get other services down here in Ecuador. I need to do this at some point though!

[KingZora]

I recently started using You Need A Budget! (YNAB) and so far it has worked excellently for me.  My finances make a lot more sense and once you get over the first initial shock of needing to set everything up it's actually really simple.  Plus I got it as a steam app so extra credit for being really easy to install on multiple computers and then automatically syncing across all of them using my dropbox account!

[stevembk]

I just add up all my bills for a typical month and see how much extra money I will have after. So when I want to buy something, I know how much I can spend. 

 

Usually it all goes towards grocery and gas. Ive had to give up alcohol, restaurants and vacations just to keep even.

[fengor]

My approach is the following:

 

I get my pay at the beginning of the month So i scheduled all of the monthly bills to be deucted in the first week of a month.

 

then i summed up all bills that get deducted less than every month (for exampel quartlery or annual expenses) and diveded the amount by 12. That gets rounded up to a nice even sum and deposited in a second bank account each month. The bills are then changed to get deducted from the second account. If you do this in the first week of the month as well you will have paid / put back all the money you need by end of the first week.

 

From what is left over  I take a part as pocket money for this month. I usually do that by going to the atm and carrying it around in cash. I'm free to spend cash money for whatever i want. The rest is marked for groceries and other stuff.

[Korsokoffs]

Excel is completely sufficient.

One should learn to micro-manage. Make everything accountable. From bills, to birthdays, to Christmas gifts.

E.g Significant others' birthday budget, $500... If you get paid fortnightly.. Divide by 26.. Equals $19.23/fortnight...

Electricity... $300/quarter...there are 12 weeks here, 6 pay periods (if paid fortnightly)... = $50pay period etc...

Micro managing your budget accounts for everything... There will be no surprise costs if you work your money this way..

Open sub accounts on your Internet banking.. Use subsequent excel spread sheets that reflect your individual sub accounts... So you can see what reflects the total sum in these balances.

[hufflepug]

I'm a huge Mint.com fangirl I've been using it for years, so pretty much everything is automated now, the only things I usually have to go in and categorize are checks. I use Excel too, but primarily for my debt tracking (I <3 graphs!) and as my checkbook.

[Terry V]

Mint is awesome to automate stuff but it's a bit too detailed for what I want to do.  I do it all in google spreadsheet and have been for months.  It's easy for me to populate so I don't lose too much without the automation which takes time anyway to categorize everything.

[Padfoot]

I highly recommend YNAB--it's simple, easily-conceptualized, and is just an all around awesome system. It helped me completely stop and reverse the spiral of debt and out-of-control spending that I was getting into.

[RedPandaOne]

I use Excel and a pad of paper. I track all my monthly bills that I need to pay (student loans, car loan, credit card, etc) in Excel. Each bill is on it's own tab, that way I can see my history in one glance.

 

At each pay check, I take a pad of paper, look at my excel spreadsheet and list out what I need to pay between the current paycheck and the next. I then look at the calendar and see if I have any major events like haircuts, gas, or doctors appointments that I need to factor in.

 

I then factor in my "fun allowance" which is $200 per paycheck. I look at how much I spent last paycheck and add in however much I need to get back up to $200. So, if I only spent $50 in the past two weeks I only need to add in $50. But if I had more fun and spent $150, then I add in $150. If I hit my $200 before my next paycheck then I'm a sad panda and have to stay in until I get paid again.

 

I do this so I only take what I need. The rest gets shoved away into my savings account. In my first year out of college with a real job I think I saved a good $5,000, maybe more.

 

So far I'm lucky and I'm single, live rent free and I don't need to factor in grocery money, but when the time comes I will apply the same method. Or modify it so it works.

[TheDisapprovingBrit]

I love the way YNAB does things, but its insistence on forcing my budget into calendar months was a dealbreaker. So right now I'm using an Excel spreadsheet which borrows heavily from YNAB, but is based around my pay frequency instead of calendar months. It makes it a hundred times easier to keep track of how my budget is coming along, because the cut off point for a budget period is always the day before I get paid. 

[TMedina]

I've done something similar - I love the philosophy of YNAB, but I adapted the principles to an Excel sheet for my own use.

[Ebon]

I've done it by hand in the past, but recently I switched to YNAB. I'd heard great reviews, and it seemed a whole lot easier to use, so I found it on Steam sale at 75% off and went for it. The software is excellent. I'm really impressed by how simple and clean the UI is, and it has a companion app that you can use on your smartphone (no internet required; it will sync up when you get access to internet) so that you can enter your purchases straight away. So far so good, though as I get paid weekly, it's a bit of a shock to be budgeting on a monthly basis. I am still getting the hang of it, but that is coming along now.

 

YNAB is essentially a glorified Excel spreadsheet (and the creater admits this), but as with most people on this thread, I think it's a good glorified Excel spreadsheet. I still keep an Excel spreadsheet for my savings goals; like Hufflepug, I like having graphs to tell me how I'm doing.

[Bingis]

For myself, I've managed to use YNAB with a good level of success over the last year. The tutorials have been incredibly useful but it has been required some trial and error. 

 

I think the main thing that I have taken from it is a "close enough is good enough" attitude. Previous attempts to micromanage my money were never successful.

 

Good luck!

[zielperson]

Used to do all in Excel, now YNAB exclusively for about two years.

 

I do everything down to the penny, though.

 

::emp::

[Woden]

I'm nearly 50 and still struggling with consistantly setting a budget for myself.

[Koalatron.9000]

*cough* Blows off the dust from this budgeting thread *cough* 

So let me preface this with I assume that I'm late to the game on everything, so if this is old news, then disregard. But hopefully this will help someone.

So what I have started doing, is I set up 2 checking accounts and a savings.

Play, Pay and Savings respectively.

I direct deposit my paycheck weekly into these 3. I used to have a wage garnish(student loans) of $65 a week, so after getting used to that, when it was finished, I just started putting that much into savings every week. I'm already used to not having that money, so it might as well go to savings. I've added all of my monthly bills up and the relative portion of bi-monthly(50%) and divided that by 4 then added $25 bucks on top of that. That is the amount that i have direct deposit into my "Pay" account. And I have all of my bills auto pay from that account. So that my bills are automated and taken care of. whatever is left over from the savings and Pay accounts, that goes into my Play account for going out (my biggest expense!), clothes, gas, whatever isn't REQUIRED or has a definite timeline.

 

My long term goals are to build up a 3 month buffer in my Pay account and then I'll reassess my bills on a yearly scale  (years bills / 52 weeks) and adjust my direct deposit to that number +25 and if there is anything left over I'll redirect those funds into savings. once I have $5k in savings (no time soon lol) I'll split half into another savings account as an emergency fund for stuff like break downs (like this last weekend...  ) or... I don't know bail money? medical stuff? emergencies. and continue to save in my original account to save up for bigger stuff such as a Truck, sail boat ( I want to be a live-aboard for a few years) a home, yadda yadda.

 

Here's hoping that this helps someone. If anyone has done this system or has advice, pointers, I'd love to hear them! 

[Cienfuegos]

@Koalatron.9000

blowing the dust off again. 

 

I I just figured up my average pay (over the last year) and my average monthly necessities. I get paid bi-weekly and the last check of the month is usually a commission check so it's sizeably bigger than the other check in the month. 

 

So my bills break down to 657.50 every paycheck with my average income being 2250(ish). How would you recommend doing this the way you do it but with remembering that my first check is ~700-800$ and second being 1300-1800$??

[Alice_In_Hell]

I'm a die-hard YNABer. I used to be awful with my money - talk about bounced checks galore and insane credit card debt. I turned myself around completely just using this software.

 

A few successes:

• Enabled me to set up an emergency fund of ~$500...more than I've ever had socked away for emergencies. Came in handy when my dog swallowed a pistachio shell and I had to run him to the vet. I was able to pay for x-rays and meds out of pocket without a worry in the world.
• I found out I had to pay about $1200 in taxes this year. On my ridiculous grad student income.  I found this out in early February. Everyone told me to put it on a payment plan. I just budgeted everything out in the software and was able to make the payment. No credit card, no payment plan, no unnecessary interest. Hallelujah!

It's so good. And I love that I don't have to shift stuff around between savings and checking all the time. I know what I've allocated for emergencies, car repairs, a buffer, pet supplies, etc. Such peace of mind.

[Cienfuegos]

Awesome! Thanks again everyone!

[LongWing]

On 12/30/2011 at 3:07 PM, bigm141414 said:

Mint FTW yo. Seriously, having all of my accounts in one place with pretty graphs and colors makes it easy to understand my personal cash flow. Without out Mint I'd probably have no idea how much I spend, or at least it would take me a lot longer to figure out.

I like budgeting although I don't follow it as close as I once did now that I have a comfortable amount of savings set aside. Plus I went through about 3 years of penny pinching and now I feel a need to live life a bit more.

 

I just started using Mint and i can't believe how much of a difference it's made.