Help me budget, please. Categories?

[glitzy07]

H and I are tightening the belt in August and trying to get our debt paid down faster.  We've never budgeted to the dollar before, but I want to print something off to at least start with so that we can track expenses for August and create a realistic budget afterwards.

Here's what I have so far.  I purposely didn't include our car payment and retirement as expenses, as those come out of our checks before we get the net amount.  When I create the budget, I will use the income amount after those items have been accounted for (as well as automatic savings transfers that happen directly).

Fixed Expenses:
Mortgage
Child Support
Daycare
Savings Transfer
Student Loan
Life Insurance
Auto Insurance
Mobile Phone
Electric/Water/Trash
Gas Service
Cable/Internet
Credit Card #1
Credit Card #2
Cell Phone Insurance


Variable Expenses:
Food - Groceries
Food - Restaurants/Bars
Food - Fast Food
Liquor Store (ETA: Including this, but generally any liquor/beer and/or bar purchases come out of our separate fun money, but occasionally they will be a joint purchase for a party or something.)
Home Supplies/Toiletries
Clothing
Gas/Fuel
Pet Food & Supplies

What variable expenses am I not thinking of?  These are the things that we encounter on a regular monthly basis.  I can think of additional things like gifts and auto registration/tabs, that I hope to eventually break out by month.  Currently those costs end up coming out of whatever is "left over" after all bills are paid in those months that they occur.  Clearly we can handle that in a more planful way, and the fact that we haven't is why we had CC debt in the first place.

Thoughts?

ETA: H and I keep "His, Hers, Ours" accounts.  Our paychecks direct deposit X amount each into his personal, my personal, our savings accounts, and then the remainder goes into our joint account.  At this point, I'm looking to budget solely based on the joint accounts.  Anybody use Mint and do something similar?  If I decide to go to a restaurant for lunch and use my personal account, I don't want it to count against our budget for the joint account.  Does this make sense?  Possible to exclude from budgeting in Mint?

[illgetthere]

Haircuts? Kid expenses?

[glitzy07]

Ooh, prescriptions are one I hadn't thought of. Haircuts have been coming out of our personal "fun money" accounts lately, though not necessary to do it that way and we'd probably be better off having it in the joint budget. H cuts SS's hair, and little one doesn't need hair cuts yet.

We don't have much in the way of kid expenses right now, although I include diapers/wipes in the toiletries section. Most of SS's activities are covered with child support.

[turkletsmom]

I escrow gifts, Christmas, pest control, HOA fees, Memberships, vet, etc that might only come out once or twice a twice a year.
Oh and home maintenance

[aMrsin09]

I am super late to this, but I use Quicken (it handles foreign currency better than Mint)

I have our personal accounts/fun money as a separate budget line item.  So if my paycheck is $1000 and it auto splits to joint and personal I enter it into Quicken as $1000 salary into the Joint with an monthly set transfer into The Personal "cash account".  Then any personal expenses get entered there.

It sounds complicated, but it makes it easier to see that yes it is "your money" but 75% of all  monthly expenses are coming from that account and "maybe" those can be cut back.

[puppylove64]

Off topic, but dh and I are set up similar with an "our" bill account, then seperate fun/spending accounts.
How do you decide how much of each of your money goes to "our" account? Is it the same $$ amount or % of your income, or based on what bills are yours/his/shared.

Dh makes more than I do and I feel like I run out of fun money first, but I'm the one that is more responsible with it! I want to reorganize our system

[lys]

Medical deductibles
Vacation
Charitable/political etc Donations
adult or kid entertainment (gym, classes, sports)
College 529
Vehicle maintenance, insurance and gas -
entertainment

[Deleted]

I frequently use: pharmacy, hair or hair/nails, massage/chiropracor, doctor, toiletries/miscellaneous (runs for stamps, $5 at hardware store, shampoo, etc), auto repairs, home repairs

I change my budget every month, so categories change with it.

[phunluvin82]

Here are some potential categories that I have in my budget on mint that I don't think you mentioned: Entertainment (concert tix, movies, sporting events, etc), Auto maintenance (this is set up to roll over from month to month b/c we will only spend on auto maintenance a few times a year but it is still in our monthly budget), Gifts (also rolls over), Health/Fitness, and Travel (also rolls over month-to-month).

I have my H and I fun money categorized in mint under 'Misc Expenses'. You can add specific categories, so I have a 'H fun money' and 'L fun money' under there. I manually adjust any charges that should go under fun money...for example, H goes out to lunch and mint will automatically categorize that as 'Restaurants' but I will just switch the category to 'H fun money' so that it doesn't take away from our 'Restaurant' budget, which is for when we go out together. It sounds like a PITA, but it is really not a big deal to me...every few days, I just go look at the transactions and switch any that I need to. Takes 2 minutes.

[glitzy07]

Aug 1, 2014 9:04:53 GMT -5 puppylove64 said:

Off topic, but dh and I are set up similar with an "our" bill account, then seperate fun/spending accounts.
How do you decide how much of each of your money goes to "our" account? Is it the same $$ amount or % of your income, or based on what bills are yours/his/shared.

Dh makes more than I do and I feel like I run out of fun money first, but I'm the one that is more responsible with it! I want to reorganize our system

I'm not sure what others here do, but we decided that we get the same fixed amount each month (or each paycheck, in our case). We make roughly the same amount of money, but we'd do it this way even if one made significantly more.

Fwiw, H usually runs out far quicker than I do, but he's a spender and I'm a saver. I've started saving from my personal in a separate savings account if I have anything left over at the end of a pay period. I tend to have fewer, but more expensive costs than H (I go to concerts whereas he buys a case of beer, for example), so I can draw from this if I have a costly purchase coming up. I'm taking a trip to a music festival in March and I will pay for my ticket and expenses from this account.