Do you have a real budget?

[kimibrighteyes]

No. We save aggressively and have wiggle room.

[ladygrey]

We don't have a budget, but both of us know the general amount of our income and expenses for each month. We don't have any debt (besides our mortgage), save aggressively for retirement, and have a healthy e-fund and investments.

I don't know that having a budget would do much to change our financial situation - good or bad.

[kershnic]

I have an excel spreadsheet for expected/fixed expenses with a big sinkhole category for everyday stuff (food, entertainment, household stuff, etc.) It keeps us in OK check but I feel like i should do better. We do have Mint, but it's complicated with things like a $200 Target bill that includes groceries, a gift, household stuff, and some clothes. I suck at splitting up bills like that.

[anna7602]

Dec 18, 2012 10:37:54 GMT -5 @msstarry said:

Or do you just sort of have savings goals and if you are meeting them you just kind of buy whatever?

It's more like this. But we have very few fixed bills. We pay for preschool once per year and homeowner's insurance as well. So those doesn't go into our monthly accounting, and then we have our mortgage and maintenance. No cars, no SLs, no cable/internet/cell phone bills.

I have a general idea of what we spend on recurring expenses, like groceries, but if I go over in a given month, it's not a big deal. And we generally end up spending about the same on our credit card every month. Some months, the credit card expenses lean more heavily toward items like travel and some months they lean more heavily toward items like Christmas presents or back-to-school clothes for DD.

I've tried to make save-to-spend goals for things like home repairs or a big vacation, but then it usually just ends up coming out of cash flow and we cut somewhere else that month or the following month.

[gnomesweetgnome]

We have always had some sort of budget since we got married. Sometimes we're better at sticking to it than others, and we usually re-evaluate it at least 2x per year. Since we started saving for our adoption, we've been more diligent about making sure we know where our money is going, and making sure that we have enough money in the budget for things like oil changes, car repairs, vet bills, and gifts. Our biggest pitfall is eating out, so we keep an eye on that line-item more than the others. We have reduced our spending in the past 2-3 months just by using our Mint.com budgeting tool.

[glitzy07]

Not really, though it would probaby benefit us to do so.

We save automatically and all bills are paid, and then we just sort of regulate the non-fixed expenses throughout the month depending on what we have. H's income varies a bit depending on what kind of overtime he gets, so some months we might be able to go out to dinner an extra time or something.

We really should do better though with the baby on the way.

[taylormade]

I use You Need A Budget (www.ynab.com) Fabulous program that has absolutely changed my freaking life.

You definitely have to read the tutorials/forums to 'get' the program, but once you do get it, it's a really cool program.

[marylou]

We keep our budget in Mint, and we're pretty strict with it.

I can see being looser/more flexible if there is no real debt involved. If it's all cash spending, I don't think I'd care too much where it's going as long as a specific % is making it's way to savings.

But for snowballing purposes, we track every penny.

[audette]

We "pay ourselves first". Money gets pulled out of our checking account the day after payday, twice a month, and it gets placed in our savings and investment accounts.

Everything else is available to spend. Some months we spend most of it. Some we don't.

[gumi]

my husband tracks everything (using software similar to Mint) and prints me out a report at the end of the month. it has a bar graph of what are average spending is and what our monthly spending was.

we are very consistent. for every month we are under our average spending, we have a month over - but there is never a lot of months over (or a lot of months under) - its always equal. and i think our consistency is why we never have sat down and created a "real" budget. we just kinda allow our lifestyle to dictate that and keep an eye on it.

if we had a major new expense, we would probably have to look at the numbers and talk about changes.

[ckinla]

I have a budget down to the dollar. If I didn't - I would be deep in the poorhouse.

[cricketwife]

Yes a very detailed one. We aren't high earners but we have a good savings and meet our short and long term savings goals (save to spend) by sticking to a budget. I find it doesn't take that much discipline for us to stay on track but its super easy for me get way off track if I stop paying att ntion.

[Deleted]

Yes, but I get lazy about tracking it. I'm in denial for December so I haven't tracked anything since the first week.

I think it's not a bad idea to have a general outline of what you should be spending, but unless you're running into issues meeting goals, I don't think being strict about tracking is necessary.

Sadly, we are NOT meeting goals so I probably need to start tracking better.

I do this same crap with food, let's pretend I didn't eat a cookie earlier. It's not helpful.

[KaraOrNot]

No, but we should. We need to save more.

[fortmyersbride]

No. But we had our first meeting today with our new financial planners. We'll meet with them quarterly and hopefully they'll help to keep us on track with maxing out retirement, college savings, investments, etc. The day to day spending doesn't worry me, but I don't think Dh and I are financially saavy enough to plan for the long-term.

[heygrey]

We spend cash only on anything variable (food, misc, fun) and were good about pacing ourselves and staying on track for the month, but I don't write down every purchase. The upside to having really low categories? Lol.

[jene]

We have savings goals that we evaluate a few times per year to make sure we are on the right track. Other than that, we don't have a strict budget.

[Deleted]

yes and we never follow it. But we need to start.

[pamela]

Yes, Dave Ramsey style every dollar has a name before the month begins and readjust during the month as needed. Always ends at $0

[flatlan]

We do not have a specific budget but we do keep our savings goals in mind, both big and small. I always think that we could save so much more if we had a stricter budget but I am too lazy to do the work and enforce it.

[thatgirl2478]

Yes. Now. Attempting a cash only budget, though we do have a lot of wiggle room, we're trying to be 'good' and not overspend as we've been prone to do in the past.

[hbomdiggity]

We have an excel spreadsheet but its not very detailed and there are fluff categories. That way we can calculate the amount for the auto transfers to savings. We don't track actual spending though. Since everything is mostly charged to a single credit card, we are able to judge how we are doing throughout the month by watching the balance.

[mrsjuleshs]

we say we have a budget but it usually gets thrown out the window because something always comes up. Christmas budget? forget it.

[orangetennvolfan]

We do. I use an excel spreadsheet. I log bills as I pay them then key everything else in at the end if the month such as groceries, gas, misc items.

[drloretta]

We're somewhere in the middle.

Probably once or twice a year we go over all the expenses and income and see where we are. We typically try and set caps on certain types of spending. And DH checks the bank account daily. But we have wiggle room, so as long as we don't go crazy we don't need to track every penny