Do you budget?

[mrschelseap09]

After installing a Christmas gift app on my iPhone, I finally realize that I have a serious spending problem. DH is paid salary but my income is always fluctuating.  I want to start budgeting but I don't even know where to begin. I would be so grateful for any pointers

[sara76]

What I do is for 3 months out a time I figure out which days are pay days and which bills will need to come out of that paycheck. What is leftover is our spending for that 2 week period. On the good weeks we have some leftover to put on the credit cards. (I pay extra on the cards already monthly, but then biweekly I try to make another little payment. Unfortunately some weeks the credit cards go up, instead of down, but now that I can barely get out of the house that has gotten better). It was much more fun and we had my income for spending. I'll be sticking around this thread for pointers.

[babybchbum]

I do what Sara does but I always budget money to go into savings too.

X amount from my paycheck goes into both boys accounts
Y goes into our account
Z goes into my Roth IRA ( on top of my 401k contributions)

Then from there I figure out the average I spend on groceries. I really try not to spend more than $50/week except gas card weeks we usually try to do all our meat shopping for the quarter.

If you have time to read Dave Ramsey Financial Peace university is really good. He has a cash money system so when it's gone it's gone.

For is the kicker was we didn't realize how much we are eating out so now we are meal planning and having a date night ( or night to order out) on the Sunday after we get paid

[sara76]

$50 a week is impressive! H gets 5 meals for himself from the restaurant and we still spend far more than that.

[babybchbum]

Sara I stock up on BOGO+ coupons and meal planning helps tremendously cut down on expenses

[sara76]

I need to meal plan. We do too many grilled cheeses and pbj's around here.

[loskadoodle]

We use mint to budget but don't do a good job of sticking to it. At least it lets is see what and where we spend.

[loskadoodle]

For meal planning we have been using the fresh 20. We love it. The meals are really tasty and pretty easy.

[mrschelseap09]

H gets paid twice a month. I've divided my bills in half and pay the day he is paid.
We have X going to his 401K, Y into Lila's account and we spend Z. His check was $500 short last week from an overpayment (that he reported back in July). I was so worried we would be strapping down but it hasn't effected us much. Between that and my gift app, I'm realizing that we are blowing through way too much money when we could be saving it.

I just don't know where to begin to figure out what we should be saving and not drive ourselves bonkers not being able to go out and do anything.

[mrschelseap09]

Dec 11, 2013 11:58:56 GMT -5 loskadoodle said:

We use mint to budget but don't do a good job of sticking to it. At least it lets is see what and where we spend.

What is Mint?

[loskadoodle]

Mint.com. You enter all your bank acts and ccs and it pulls in all your transactions and you can set up budgets, savings goals, etc

[amellis2]

Ha! Right now we don't budget so much as worry about which bill to skip for a few weeks! When I get a job, though, it looked a lot like Sara's thing. Before kids I meal planned like a boss; now...nope. Almost never gets done.

[mzcastig]

I budgeted for a long time to pay off credit cards, H's car loan, and to save emergency money.  After we did all that, I stopped.  I'm back to budgeting now because we bought that fixer-upper house with cash and need to save again.  It's tough.  I just made a spreadsheet, but it's pretty crude.  I have a tab for all of our bills, and then tabs for each budget (gas, groceries, fun $, etc).  On another tab, I keep track of income.  We keep all of our receipts and I enter them in daily so I know what we have left to spend.  It's a lot of work, but it has to be done. 

[mrschelseap09]

Dec 11, 2013 15:48:33 GMT -5 loskadoodle said:

Mint.com. You enter all your bank acts and ccs and it pulls in all your transactions and you can set up budgets, savings goals, etc

Thank you! I will definitely look into that site. DH and I discussed it and we are going to start budgeting in the new year. 

Mitzi - I guess that is why I'm so confused where to start. DH and I have always been against CCs. We agreed from the beginning that if it couldn't be purchased in cash, we really didn't need it. It's time to stop spending and start saving more. 

[mzcastig]

For me, it's honestly a PITA, but the rewards are great. :-)