A poll of sorts: How do you budget?

[glitzy07]

Since we've likely got a lot of different ways of doing things around here, I'm curious to see how many of us budget (or don't).  Maybe some of us will get ideas for better ways to handle our own finances from the answers.

1) Do you budget to the penny?  Do you loosely budget?  Is your money a free for all?  Yours/mine/ours?  His and hers?  Joint everything?
2) Do you use a spreadsheet?  Mint.com?  Quicken?  A notebook?
3) How do you handle savings?  Automatic transfer?  Transfer excess at the end of the month?
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)?
5) What else is anyone else wondering about budgeting?  

[dbsk8dance]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything? Ours. Budget loosely
2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook? Mint.com
3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month? We have automatic savings for some things, but I also like doing it manually. We don't often have much left over at the end of the month right now. 
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)? Usually it goes to our Vacation fund. Sometimes we'll have something that we've been wanting and we'll get that.  Tax refund goes to topping off efund and Roths usually. 

[imojoebunny]

I used to budget savings to the penny, and the rest as tightly as I could to meet the savings goal. Now that our income outpaces our spending, we just save the amount, and don't really budget the rest of the items, since we don't go over. We save separately for a few things, and that is automatically moved to an account every month.

[gogreengowhite]

1. I budget to the penny and all money is joint.

2. I use an excel spreadsheet. I need more control over moving the buckets around than programs give me.

3. Savings is budgeted but doesn't get transferred until the end of the month. All excess goes into a slush fund.

4. Found money is a free for all. Since the amounts are usually small we do dinner or a night out.

[papie]

Feb 28, 2014 13:34:14 GMT -5 glitzy07 said:

Since we've likely got a lot of different ways of doing things around here, I'm curious to see how many of us budget (or don't).  Maybe some of us will get ideas for better ways to handle our own finances from the answers.

1) Do you budget to the penny?  Do you loosely budget?  Is your money a free for all?  Yours/mine/ours?  His and hers?  Joint everything?
2) Do you use a spreadsheet?  Mint.com?  Quicken?  A notebook?
3) How do you handle savings?  Automatic transfer?  Transfer excess at the end of the month?
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)?
5) What else is anyone else wondering about budgeting?  

1) Loose budget, completely joint
2) Spreadsheet
3) Automatic transfer for retirement, transfer excess for the rest
4) birthday money is fun money.  Tax returns are budgeted for, and treated the same way any other lump sum like a bonus would be.  Either paying down debt (we have a little bit of house renos left to pay), general savings, vacation savings, etc.

[melmo1122]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything? I'm single so it's all my money Loosely budget but I try to keep my actuals under/close to my budget

2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook? Mint app

3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month? Direct deposit twice a month on paydays. If my checking account balance gets too big then I transfer a chunk over to savings

4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)? I don't really get birthday money, if I do I put it in savings usually, or save it towards something I want to purchase. My small tax refund goes to savings, although this year I am using it to get a new patio door

5) What else is anyone else wondering about budgeting?

[btay]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything? Very loosely. We have always kept our accounts 100% separate and just split bills.

2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook? I have mint.com and a spreadsheat.

3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month? When I get paid I take any money left over from the last paycheck and use it towards debt paydown. Once the debt is gone this will go to savings.

4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)? Buy something nice for myself with a small portion of it and then the rest goes to debt payoff.

[illgetthere]

Feb 28, 2014 13:34:14 GMT -5 glitzy07 said:

1) Do you budget to the penny?  Do you loosely budget?  Is your money a free for all?  Yours/mine/ours?  His and hers?  Joint everything? Ours. Loosely. We do have individual accounts that our fun money goes into.
2) Do you use a spreadsheet?  Mint.com?  Quicken?  A notebook? Spreadsheet for the actual budget. Trackexpenses though our bank's website.
3) How do you handle savings?  Automatic transfer?  Transfer excess at the end of the month? Manual transfer for now until I'm sure everything is going as planned.  Will automate it later.
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)? Gift money is kept individually unless we agreed on a goal that we would put it towards.  Joint money is agreed on together....save to spend account, efund, debt, etc
5) What else is anyone else wondering about budgeting?  

[shaynaatl]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything? Loose budget
2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook? Excel for savings and monthly P&L, Mint for tracking spending.
3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month? Transfer excess to ING savings acct.
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)? Goes to ING.

[aliciar6]

1) we just loosly budget because things come up and everything just kind of goes in 1 pot.
We will need to break out a seperate savings for the business to pay for expenses and get a CC specific for that.
2) no to all of that
3) everything goes into 1 account automatically. savings is broken up as follows monthly: 2K business fund, 2K general savings, 500 Vacation, 250 each fun money, AVG bills $3791 which is a HIGH estimate. I'm not putting in our TSP allotments since I don't count that as part of our budget since it comes right out of our paycheck.
4) any excess (bonuses, tax refunds, royalties) gets split between General savings, business fund, and vacation fund. birthday & christmas money goes to what ever we want.

[phunluvin82]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything? Joint everything, and basically to the penny.
2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook? mint
3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month? Automatic transfer
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)? Put toward debt

[cookies]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? We have joint everything and I budget to the penny, but my categories are pretty generic - meaning, I don't have a ton of categories.

2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook?  I use mint to track all of my expenses, then enter those expenses into my budget spreadsheet on Google docs.  I'm playing around with the trial of YNAB now and like the principle of it. I don't want to spend $60 on the software though, so I just made up a spreadsheet based on it to try out.

3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month? I transfer what's leftover at the end of the month. 

4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)? I spend my birthday money, duh.  The tax refund will go into savings this year. We need to replenish our efund.

[glitzy07]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything?

We loosely budget in the sense that all fixed bills are paid before anything else, but we don't track to every penny (at least not right now).  We sort of float the remainder of our money and make it work for groceries, pet food, dinners out, gifts, etc.  We follow yours/mine/ours and have joint accounts with separate fun money accounts.

2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook?

I've tried creating a spreadsheet in the past to lay everything out, but have always struggled with the inconsistent charges (see: gifts, haircuts, etc).  So mostly we use the budgeting tool in Mint to at least make sure we're keeping an eye on things like gas, food, etc.  I've set some arbitrary budgets based on the past year's averages, but don't worry too much if we go over in one category because we usually even out by the end of the month. 

3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month?

We always "pay ourselves first" and have money direct deposited to savings right from our paychecks.  We don't transfer excess at the end of the month because we don't budget that carefully, as mentioned above, and usually use any possible excess to even things out from month to month.

4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)?

It really depends.  If it's a small amount then we'll usually use it for something fun (dinner out, something we've been eyeing but too cheap to buy), but large amounts are usually earmarked for something specific (debt repayment, home improvement).

5) What else is anyone else wondering about budgeting?

I've always wanted to track every penny for a month or two to figure out exactly where our money is going to create a more accurate budget, but there never seems to be a "good" time to do it.  I was thinking of telling H that we should keep every single receipt and break it out in March (e.g. break out the Target receipts into categories), but we'll have some non-recurring travel expenses in March and it wouldn't be an accurate picture of our every day.  How do you deal with that if you're doing zero based budgeting?

[flygirl22]

1. I budget to the penny but I'm not strict about going over certian budget catagories. All of our money is Joint, but we have personal fun money budgets.
2. Spreadsheet on my Ipad. I have mint but I don't use it for budgeting, I just use it to look at my total $$ by account.
3. A combination- I auto transfer things that are fixed, and transfer excess at the end of the month into other catagories, whether that be vacation, or a save to spend account.
4. Tax refunds and bonuses go into normal income. Birthday/Xmas money go into personal fun money budget or entertainment budget.

[halfpint]

1) We loosely budget - rough idea of spending for necessities so that we know what we can spend on fun stuff, whether we need to cut back on something, etc.
2) I use our bank's website - they have a money manager tool so you can set up a budget, and it tells you on average what you've spent in each category over a given period of time. Just about all of our major accounts are with them, save our retirement and investment funds.
3) Savings are an automatic transfer - we "pay ourselves" first. We have a fund for our son, and then our e-fund, and then our investments (mid-term savings). Of course retirement comes out, too (employer 401(k) and Roth IRA).
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)?
Depending on how much it is - if it's a substantial amount, we usually apply it to a debt (mortgage, student loans). If it's something smaller, we'll probably blow it on something fun, or something we've been putting off (like this year, we're fixing H's car with our tax refund. It wasn't a necessary repair, some electrical issues, but now we have some extra cash to take care of it.)


Read more: pandce.proboards.com/thread/295729/poll-sorts-budget#ixzz2udy0OSro

[martini]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything? We budget loosely. Our finances our mostly separate. We each have our own checking accounts and expenses we are responsible for. We are on each other's accounts and can auto transfer to each other if needed, but it's rare that it's needed. We both just prefer this way. Our savings accounts are joint.

2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook? I have an excel spreadsheet I use to calculate my budget. I used to track in excel as well, but don't do it quite as much anymore now that I feel like I know what I usually spend.

3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month? I have auto transfers each week when my paycheck hits my account. It works for me, if I had to do it manually, it would be harder for me to do it regularly.

4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)? Depends on the timing. Sometimes it goes towards something fun, but lately everything has been going into savings. We are trying to beef up our down payment fund for our next house. With our tax refund this year, we are putting half into our emergency fund, then the other half is being divided between us to use as wanted. I plan to put my portion into the new house fund.

5) What else is anyone else wondering about budgeting?

I'm wondering how often people evaluate their budgets and make changes? Is it a yearly thing for you? Quarterly?

Read more: pandce.proboards.com/thread/295729/poll-sorts-budget#ixzz2udyWzkLZ

[hocus2]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything?

Before I got married it was down to the dollar, now it is a joint everything loose budget.

2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook?

I used to notebook when I was single. I use excel now.

3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month?

Ha ha ha. We generally save bonuses and live of salary but we aren't impressive savers. I love my cushy lifestyle too much. FWIW we do put in ~10% into 401K. I'm talking about saving beyond that.

4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)?

Like $100 gifts? Goes in my wallet until I spend it. $1000 would go into the common savings pot. We're using our refund this year for a vacation.

5) What else is anyone else wondering about budgeting?

[lya]

Feb 28, 2014 13:34:14 GMT -5 glitzy07 said:

1) Do you budget to the penny?  Do you loosely budget?  Is your money a free for all?  Yours/mine/ours?  His and hers?  Joint everything?

 In theory we have combined accounts, as in both of our names are on all accounts and we each have online access to them.  In practice though, I deal with my accounts and H with his (our paychecks go into our respective accounts.    I am a natural saver and H is a natural spender.  So H deals with the bills and everyday spending.  For this we loosely budget and he keeps a running total of everything in his head.  We use my paychecks for saving - xmas, travel, retirement, etc.  This is usually budgeted to the nearest $50 or so.  Any fun money goes on a credit card that gets paid by H's accounts.  We don't have a set limit on fun money.
2) Do you use a spreadsheet?  Mint.com?  Quicken?  A notebook?

H has a running total in his head - I have no idea how this works and if I try to understand it I get anxious.  I have just learned to trust that he knows what he is doing.
3) How do you handle savings?  Automatic transfer?  Transfer excess at the end of the month?
Again, my paychecks go towards this.  At the beginning of each year I come up with yearly goals and budgets.  Then break it down into a per month or per paycheck basis.  Every other week when my check comes in, I split it up into several labels. 
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)?

If its comes up in H's accounts it usually goes towards travel or a weekend getaway.  If its in mine it usually gets hoarded.
5) What else is anyone else wondering about budgeting?  

[Deleted]

1) Free for all, but we don't exceed our means.

2) We do update a spreadsheet on a monthly basis with our bank and investment account balances minus my student loans and our anticipated tax liability for the next year.  This is in a google doc. I use Mint to get my husband's account balances for that.

3) We differ. I tend to pay our/my bills out of my accounts (which is where my paycheck goes). Or I steal money from our joint accounts. My husband has an auto transfer of a certain amount from each paycheck into the joint accounts. He also has an automatic transfer of money into our brokerage account. You can probably tell which of us is the super-organized accountant.

4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)? We don't get birthday gift money or tax refunds, but we do get bonuses. My philosophy with bonuses is to treat myself to something nice and then save/invest the rest. His philosophy with bonuses is to be nagged by his wife to treat himself to something else, but then invest all of it anyway.

5) Nope.

[magdala]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything?  Knowing that expenses will increase and income will decrease when baby arrives, we have just started budgeting to the penny.  
2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook?   Mint.com
3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month?  Savings is an automatic transfer three days after our paychecks hit the bank.   The three days is to account for weekends/holidays. 
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)?  Tax refunds are earmarked for vacation savings.  Other found money is enjoyed.  
5) What else is anyone else wondering about budgeting?  No. 

[genet313]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything?
 Loosely budget - we try to keep our CC bill under a certain amount every month, and we force save $X every month.  Joint everything, though I do have an old account with a couple of thousand in it that is separate - will likely use that if shit hits the fan.
2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook?
 No, but I like to log our CC spending every month to see where the $ is going.  
3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month?
 We transfer beginning of the month so it's not available to us, really.  
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)?
 Depends on the amount. Large amounts go right to savings. Small amounts stay with us for fun money.
5) What else is anyone else wondering about budgeting?

[mbcdefg]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget?
We both try to budget things out, but it's more of a mental list than a strict budget. MH makes a stricter budget than I do.

Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything?
We have three accounts at our bank ... his checking, my checking, and joint savings. We only have personal credit cards, no joints. Our personal checking accounts cover our own CC bills, gas and tolls, stuff we buy for ourselves, gifts for each other, etc.

Gifts for family usually come out of the joint account. I do the grocery shopping for food and household products with my own debit card/checking account. (The amount I give him for bills/savings every month reflects that I pay for the groceries - so my percentage of contribution might be smaller than his, but I'm going the grocery shopping so it evens out.)

If it's something like us going out for dinner, one of us will pick up the check out of our own spending money ... and what works for us is that the person who proposes going out will be the one to pay for it. That way we don't get there and find us arguing over the bill, or finding that one/both of us are short on spending money. So if I don't have the money to pay for it, I won't be the one to suggest that we go out. If friends want to go out for dinner or something, we discuss how much spending money we each have and who will pay before we agree to join them.

2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook?
Scratch paper I usually scribble out a two-week budget on a piece of scratch paper when I get a paycheck, and I find MH's scratch paper budgets all over the house.

3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month?
I get paid twice a month, and as soon as it's deposited I transfer a set amount to his checking account. He pays all the bills from that plus the contribution from his own paycheck. Whatever is left from that get deposited into savings.

4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)?
Personal birthday/holiday gift money is our own. If, say, my mom gives us a check for a holiday, we put it toward something joint such as a trip/experience or a restaurant meal. Tax refunds are usually put into savings or spent on something for the house (furniture, repairs, etc.).

I'm expecting a bonus at work soon and I expect to put 50% in savings, spend 25% on a new dresser for our bedroom, and spend the remainder on something for myself, like clothes or a bag. If it were a smaller bonus I'd probably spend 100% on something like a dinner for both of us, or all on myself as a treat, but it's enough where I can use it to benefit both of us.

[krystee]

We just decide how much we're putting toward savings and debt that month and everything else is kind of a free for all at the moment. We only have joint accounts. We used to do a budget, and those numbers serve as a mental guidepost for us now.

In March, we're going to the envelope system for eating out so we can increase savings a bit. All our other expenses are reasonable.

[teatimefor2]

Feb 28, 2014 13:34:14 GMT -5 glitzy07 said:

1) Do you budget to the penny?  Do you loosely budget?  Is your money a free for all?  Yours/mine/ours?  His and hers?  Joint everything?  Everything is joint.  One paper to the penny, but in reality loosely.
2) Do you use a spreadsheet?  Mint.com?  Quicken?  A notebook? Mint and a spreadsheet
3) How do you handle savings?  Automatic transfer?  Transfer excess at the end of the month?  Automatic transfer
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)?  Depends on our needs, varies year to year, expect for birthday money.  That is free range.
5) What else is anyone else wondering about budgeting?  

[ewall]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything? We budget previous month's income and leave about $250 unbudgeted for overages/unplanned expenses. Joint everything. I spend more in fun money than him, but he doesn't care.


2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook? You Need A Budget (YNAB)


3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month? We budget for our savings at the beginning of the month along with all other expenses. I transfer the funds myself. When I first started our efund, I had automatic transfer set up so the money built up without us missing it.


4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)? I always want to save my bday money, but H says absolutely not, gift money is for fun. When there is one, tax refund goes to retirement/investments. Large amounts of found money go toward retirement, investments, or big purchases/improvements around the house. Small amounts go toward shopping wants or needs. Currently I have a $100 GC from work that I will use on new running shoes. Now I don't have to budget for them!


5) What else is anyone else wondering about budgeting? Not necessarily budget related, but do I need my brokerage account? I have a managed account through RBC. The expense seems like a waste of money. I feel like I would be better off at Fidelity or Vanguard picking my own low cost funds. Maybe I should start my own thread for this one..

[cajunmom]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything? On our budget spreadsheet, I budget to the penny. However, we typically don't spend it all. I usually have at about $1000 that gets carried over month to month. Our money is joint everything.
2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook? Just an Excel spreadsheet that I put together seven years ago.
3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month? I put a set amount in each month, and then may put in extra depending on extra at the end of the month. I regularly transfer some of my fun money into a travel account.
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)? Extra payment on car loan/savings. This year's tax refund is going to pay off our new fence.

[aspentosh]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything? Ours. Loosely.
2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook? Mint
3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month? Minimum automatic transfer from each of H's paychecks, plus transfer of excess at end of month (if applicable).
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)? Some things are budgeted for (usually tax refund = house project or vacation fund) whereas other things (birthday gifts) are fun money.

[mkemama]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything?
Budget to the penny (mainly because I'm hourly & my checks vary, so we have to adjust our savings plan every month), joint accounts but we each have an individual fun money account.

2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook?
I use Mint & scratch paper.

3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month?
DH's checks go to one account to handle the big bills. I have auto savings set up twice a month for my checks to different ING/Capital One accounts (groceries, gifts, clothes, transportation, family activities, etc.). I pay any monthly bills from these & we carry over anything that's left to the next month. This has been super helpful for paying irregular expenses like car registration, higher winter utility bills, and wedding gifts. Anything left from my checks after all of this gets transferred to savings at the end of the month.


4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)?
Gifts & DH's go to our family account, tax refund usually goes to medical deductibles or home projects.

[lishie]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything? Ours. We've tried budgets twice, and we're just too lazy to do it.
2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook? nothing.
3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month? automatic transfers to the kids 529s, general savings, car savings, tax/insurance savings.
4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)? goes into our brokerage account.
5) What else is anyone else wondering about budgeting?

[monsterz]

1) Do you budget to the penny? Do you loosely budget? Is your money a free for all? Yours/mine/ours? His and hers? Joint everything?

We loosely budget our joint spending, we often go over in certain categories but we have a decent sized buffer and don't exceed our monthly income. Personal spending I don't budget but H has recently started to. We have very generous personal spending allocations.

2) Do you use a spreadsheet? Mint.com? Quicken? A notebook?
I use Mint

3) How do you handle savings? Automatic transfer? Transfer excess at the end of the month?
I just set up an automatic transfer to cover our future child(ren) expenses. I also contribute the max to my ESPP which is an automatic savings account. Other savings I transfer out manually. Recently we've been cash flowing some home improvements so there has been very little going into savings.

4) What do you do with "found" money (birthday gift money, tax refund, etc)?
I've recently decided to start investing the rebate checks from ebates on a quarterly basis. Other found money goes into the general pool of money. The ESPP money is almost like found money as I never know exactly how much it will be at vest time, that money either goes to our vacation fund, home improvement projects or general long term savings.