Need help with household budget

[Just Kate]

I desperately want to make a household budget and actually stick with it!!! The thing is, like with so many things, I am great at planning the budget. I can make all kind of cute little spreadsheets to show how I plan to spend our money next month. The problem is that I have no idea how to implement the plan!

 

What I want...something that would allow me to put my money into categories (food, bills, debt, kids, etc.) and then would allow me to carry over from month to month. I would really like something that would attach to my personal checking account, as I pay all of my bills online and use a debit card occasionally. I also need to be able to plan how I should spend each paycheck.

 

I have spent all evening trying to figure out mvelopes.com, and frankly I think I give up! I'm usually pretty good at navigating websites but this one has me so confused.

 

I have also done the free trial at ynab.com (you need a budget). I love the concept of that budgeting system, but it will be a while until we have enough money set aside to pay for the next month (which is how that system is set up to work).

 

How do you manage your household budget? How do you track spending? How do you manage sinking funds?

 

For once, I want to do this right!!! And surely there are some people here who have figured it out...right? You are out there, aren't you? :D

[KirstenH]

We use mint.com to track all of our income and expenditures. It's very useful.

[fraidycat]

youneedabudget.com

 

YNAB has transformed our life, financially speaking. I cannot say enough good things about this program. I've been using it for over two years, and I do NOT use the "buffer" system. You don't HAVE to do it that way. Eventually, I hope to get there, but it is not at the top of my priority list.

[DawnM]

YNAB (You Need A Budget) We love, love, love it and there are forums if you have questions.

[mytwomonkeys]

i have a budget each month. it's really simple, but it *may* help you, i'm not sure. hopefully it will make sense trying to type it without sharing our budget form. this still has personal info to give you an idea, but not our actual budget. it varies from month to month, but basically, i spend every.single.dollar on paper before we get paid. i have 3 categories:

1) Pay with Cash 2) Automatic Withdraw 3) Pay Online.

 

Here's an example of our budget this month... (it's color coded on a spread sheet. I also like an app called moneywise).

 

Pay with Cash Items: (We use the Dave Ramsey Envelope System)

 

• Gas for Car/Lawn Mower
  
• Rent
  
• Groceries
  
• Haircuts
  
• Family Recreation
  
• Small Group Childcare
  
• Kenny's Trip
  
• Wedding Gift for Michelle
  
• Kenny's Oil Change
  
• Small Group Mission package
  
• Lawn Mower Repair
  
• Emergency Fund payback (we used money from our fund last month, so I need to reimburse it to keep it always at our $1,000 minimum)
  

 

Automatic Withdraw:

• Car Insurance
  
• Health Insurance
  
• Life Insurance
  
• Netflix
  

 

Pay Online (I pay these through our bank online):

 

• Tithe
  
• Church Building Fund
  
• Car Payment
  
• Waste Pro Trash Co.
  
• Student Loans
  
• Straight Talk cell phones
  
• Internet
  

 

 

That's it. Any extra money we have goes into our savings.

 

 

Hope this helps you a little bit.

[fraidycat]

I should expand my original post.

 

Other than not having the buffer, I do use YNAB to track all expenditures, sinking funds, savings - short and long term, etc.

 

Due to the all to common accounting errors thanks to military PCS, we did not get paid this month...at all, and thanks to YNAB we did not have to scramble to pay bills or worry about feeding our family. Also thanks to YNAB, I will know where the money needs to "go back to" (category wise) when our pay does get straightened out and we get paid back. Our bank account is not in any danger of dipping to a dangerously low level, we haven't changed anything - still eating out more than we probably should, and all done without the YNAB buffer, OR a paycheck.

[Just Kate]

youneedabudget.com

 

YNAB has transformed our life, financially speaking. I cannot say enough good things about this program. I've been using it for over two years, and I do NOT use the "buffer" system. You don't HAVE to do it that way. Eventually, I hope to get there, but it is not at the top of my priority list.

 

YNAB (You Need A Budget) We love, love, love it and there are forums if you have questions.

 

Okay, going back to look at it to see how it can work without using the buffer.

 

Anyone use the iphone (or ipad) app? How is it?

 

Anyone else have other suggestions? I am all ears!!!:bigear:

[KrissiK]

I use excel. No, it doesn't link to my bank account, but I've been budgeting like this now for 6 years and I'm able to keep it going and I am not one to be able to keep up things like charts and all that. But, I just do it. I keep receipts, I use my checkbook register and I access our credit card statements on-line and it works. Here's pretty much what I do:

** 1 worksheet is labled "skeleton budget" and that's the basic budget. I have what dh brings home each month and then I go from there.

Line 1 is tithe, then mortgage, utilities, car insurance (even though we pay annually, I put away some each month), car registration, gas/electric, cell phone, internet, etc. etc. on down the line.

 

** Then I have monthly worksheets and I just input everything I spend. I have it set up so that say, I budget $660/month for groceries. Then, each week, I just put it in, Excel adds it up, subtracts it from how much the budget is and I can keep track of how much I have left to spend.

 

** I also have it set up to carry-over month to month. Some months I don't buy clothes for myself, so I'm able to carry over that amount to a month where I may spend more than is specifically budgeted for that month.

 

** I also have a worksheet where I have "accounts" that don't fall under monthly budgeted items. I try to put about $400/month into savings and so if we have a large car repair bill, our vacation fund, stuff like that comes out of savings and I keep track of that, too.

 

I know it sounds confusing, but I've set Excel up to keep totals and monthly averages and at the end of each year I'm able to tweak and fine-tune the budget. It works really well for me and is pretty simple once it's all set up. All I have to do is input the numbers.

[2squared]

How do you manage your household budget? How do you track spending? How do you manage sinking funds?

 

I create the household budget in Excel, and I also manage our sinking funds in Excel. I use Quicken to track actual spending, and I could use it for budgeting, but I don't. Not sure why. Probably just habit.

 

Within Quicken, all transactions are updated electronically. I love having all our bank accounts, debt, and investments electronically updated at the same time.

[MomatHWTK]

I use Quicken and deduct upcoming bills using estimates. So entered monthly expenses are programmed to be entered as an estimate about 30 days in advance, as are paychecks.

[fraidycat]

I also have the YNAB on both mine and DH's Ipods. We are not great about using it on a day to day basis, but that's okay, because I update YNAB regularly on my laptop. I do not do downloads from the bank, I enter it all manually.

 

However, I love the app for when we are traveling. Gas, hotels, restaurants, and other expenditures entered in real-time so that I don't have 30 or 40 transactions to enter when I get home.

[KirstenH]

Where on Earth are you ladies finding the time to keep track of this manually? I can't even imagine it. It would never, ever get done here. If I tried, I'd screw it up anyway.

[fraidycat]

Where on Earth are you ladies finding the time to keep track of this manually? I can't even imagine it. It would never, ever get done here. If I tried, I'd screw it up anyway.

 

Tracking of spending takes probably less than 2 minutes per day, or less than 10 minutes for the whole week when I let it slide that long (I try not to). We don't spend every day, and on the days we do go out to run errands, grocery shop, etc. there are usually 5 or less transactions to enter.

 

It does take a little longer (maybe 15-20ish minutes?) once per pay period, or once a month, to divvy up all the money to the categories. Seriously, at first it'll take a little longer because there is a bit of a learning curve - for most people. I seemed to just "get it", intuitively as soon as I saw it and started working with it, but I will say it again - the support forum (and Jesse, the owner) at YNAB is to budgeting that The Hive (and SWB) is to homeschooling. Very awesome people. Very helpful people, and they will answer the same newbie question 2000 times with the same level of patience as if you were the first to ask it. Really.

 

I would not preach this long or loud if YNAB had not completely transformed my financial life for the better. In my opinion, it is the BEST $60 I've ever spent. EVER.

[mytwomonkeys]

Where on Earth are you ladies finding the time to keep track of this manually? I can't even imagine it. It would never, ever get done here. If I tried, I'd screw it up anyway.

 

well, for me it's only once a month (it takes about an hour to to pay, schedule, budget, etc. using a spread sheet but the template is already there. i'm just tweaking numbers). my husband get's paid on the 15th & i schedule all of our bills to go out through the bank checking account. i also know the exact amount that will be automatically withdrawn & the exact dates. then, the rest of our bills are cash only and my husband gets the cash from the bank on the day he gets paid. he brings it home & i divide it into envelopes. then i'm done until the following month. it's a cinch. our system did take several months to tweak, but we've been doing it this way for years & now it's just second nature.

Edited April 10, 2012 by mytwomonkeys

[Annie G]

What I can't figure out is this:

 

We use our debit card for purchases and it works for us. So I make up a budget, (used YNAB) and staying within budget wasn't the problem. My big problem is balancing my checking account, which I do fairly often to make sure I haven't missed entering a transaction or to make sure automatic bills are paid. So how do you balance your checkbook register with YNAB or an excel spreadsheet?

I've stopped trying to use YNAB and it's still difficult to track. I enter in my checkbook the bills that come out- sometimes a month in advance of when they do come out. And then as I try to balance, I have to flip back and remember what hasn't actually been paid yet so I can balance w the bank.

 

Is that clear at all? For instance, I pay car insurance every six months. I used to note 1/6 of the amount in my checkbook and then when it came time to pay, I had the money in there. But if I want to balance my checkbook, I have to flip back and see how many months' worth of car insurance I have written down so I can balance with the bank. It was such a pain that I don't even do it that way now.

 

How do you folks do this??

[kroe1]

I use a Dave Ramsey - like system, but just using Quicken. For "envelopes" I have set up separate transfer dummy accounts.

 

For example, I know I have a $5000 maintenance fee every quarter. But every month I transfer $1600 from my checking account in Quicken to a dummy maintence account in Quicken. The money is actually just staying in my interest bearing checking account, but my mind does not know that. This keeps me from spending that money before it is due. Then I transfer the money from the dummy account back into thw checking account when it becomes due. I due this for everything including quarterly estimated taxes, emergency funds, future car payments (so I can pay cash for cars), future college expenses, annual insurance fees, etc.

 

I was lucky that someone taught me to budget in my teens so I never had a difficult transition.

 

Good luck with your adventure. Self discipline is half the battle which I found I could only do by tricking my mind.

:)

[cjzimmer1]

I'm another quicken user. They have a planner feature that allows you to put in your expected income and then where it will be spent (basically a virtual envelop system). It works very well. When planning to buy something, I check the planner to see if I have enough money budgeted for said purchase. I actually only look at my checking balance on the day I'm writing out monthly bills (we actually charge most of our stuff but than I pay it off on the last day of the month, this works better for me than handling cash which I tend to lose track of because the transaction are downloaded daily) to make sure the money is in the checking account (the bulk of our money goes into the savings account and I just move over what I need to pay the bills twice a month). Savings doesn't pay much but even a dollar of interest adds up over the year so I figure it's free money since the alternative is the money sitting in checking which earns nothing.

[KrissiK]

Where on Earth are you ladies finding the time to keep track of this manually? I can't even imagine it. It would never, ever get done here. If I tried, I'd screw it up anyway.

 

Setting up the budget on excel does take some time, but once it's done, ,it takes hardly any time at all. when I get back from the store I either just throw the receipt on a pile on the counter-top or do it really quick. It takes 30 seconds to open excel, put in a number and go. When I go to Target it takes a little longer, because I do have to itemize, but even then it's a 5 minute job.

[KirstenH]

Maybe I'm being dense, but what is the advantage of doing it manually as opposed to letting a program do it for you?

[MomatHWTK]

If you enter the data manually, you are actually seeing each entry and can more quickly identify excess spending or billing anomolies. I allow my bank to pay bills automatically, but I review them first and enter them into the Quicken account. I'm fine with doing that and it allows me to really look at the high cable bill each month (which actually is only an internet bill now for that very reason.)

[Princess Peach]

I use a Dave Ramsey - like system, but just using Quicken. For "envelopes" I have set up separate transfer dummy accounts.

 

For example, I know I have a $5000 maintenance fee every quarter. But every month I transfer $1600 from my checking account in Quicken to a dummy maintence account in Quicken. The money is actually just staying in my interest bearing checking account, but my mind does not know that. This keeps me from spending that money before it is due. Then I transfer the money from the dummy account back into thw checking account when it becomes due. I due this for everything including quarterly estimated taxes, emergency funds, future car payments (so I can pay cash for cars), future college expenses, annual insurance fees, etc.

 

I was lucky that someone taught me to budget in my teens so I never had a difficult transition.

 

Good luck with your adventure. Self discipline is half the battle which I found I could only do by tricking my mind.

:)

 

That is such a great idea! Thank you. Why didn't I think of that? I'm so dense when it comes to stuff like this. :glare:

[fraidycat]

Maybe I'm being dense, but what is the advantage of doing it manually as opposed to letting a program do it for you?

 

Awareness. It is amazing how quickly money can "disappear" when we're not paying attention. $5 here, $3 there - it all adds up to "where did all the money go?" at the end of the month.

[fraidycat]

What I can't figure out is this:

 

We use our debit card for purchases and it works for us. So I make up a budget, (used YNAB) and staying within budget wasn't the problem. My big problem is balancing my checking account, which I do fairly often to make sure I haven't missed entering a transaction or to make sure automatic bills are paid. So how do you balance your checkbook register with YNAB or an excel spreadsheet?

I've stopped trying to use YNAB and it's still difficult to track. I enter in my checkbook the bills that come out- sometimes a month in advance of when they do come out. And then as I try to balance, I have to flip back and remember what hasn't actually been paid yet so I can balance w the bank.

 

Is that clear at all? For instance, I pay car insurance every six months. I used to note 1/6 of the amount in my checkbook and then when it came time to pay, I had the money in there. But if I want to balance my checkbook, I have to flip back and see how many months' worth of car insurance I have written down so I can balance with the bank. It was such a pain that I don't even do it that way now.

 

How do you folks do this??

 

YNAB is my checkbook register. I'm not sure I understand what you're asking, but I'll give it a try. I only input a transaction when it occurs. For example, on the first of the month when I pay all my bills, I enter them on the first of the month. They may not come out for 3-5 days (or longer with a check), but I enter that money as spent on the first and categorized to the corresponding category so I know my "real" balance (working balance). When it actually clears through the bank account, I mark it as cleared. There are two balances in YNAB at the bottom of the register page, cleared balance and working balance. The cleared balance matches my bank, the working balance (the one that you see on the left hand side of YNAB) is what I know that I really have because my property manager for our house hasn't cashed his checks in three months.

 

The uncleared transactions also stay at the bottom of the register now, so they are easy to see so you know they haven't cleared and can find them to clear them when someone does finally get around to cashing their check(s).

[Annie G]

Thank you so much! I'm going to have to give YNAB another try. When I tried it I somehow missed the features you're describing. I asked on the forums and they all told me to keep a separate tracking sheet for each category so I'd know how money was spent.

 

So what you said makes sense for routine bills- does it work the same way for things like food? Say I budget $800 a month for food and take that out at the beginning of the month. As I go through the month, spending that money and categorizing it as food, how does it reconcile the 'cleared' balance vs. the 'working' balance?

 

 

Thanks for your help- the YNAB forums were full of nice people but I couldn't seem to explain WHAT my issues were. I need just what you describe- a working balance and a cleared balance!

[fraidycat]

Thank you so much! I'm going to have to give YNAB another try. When I tried it I somehow missed the features you're describing. I asked on the forums and they all told me to keep a separate tracking sheet for each category so I'd know how money was spent.

 

So what you said makes sense for routine bills- does it work the same way for things like food? Say I budget $800 a month for food and take that out at the beginning of the month. As I go through the month, spending that money and categorizing it as food, how does it reconcile the 'cleared' balance vs. the 'working' balance?

 

 

Thanks for your help- the YNAB forums were full of nice people but I couldn't seem to explain WHAT my issues were. I need just what you describe- a working balance and a cleared balance!

 

No problem. Yes, you should have the two balances right at the bottom of your register screen.

 

As for food - you can do it one of two ways. If you take the money out and actually physically put it in a cash envelope, you can categorize the withdraw once as food, then not track it within YNAB from there and just track it in your envelope.

 

OR:

 

You can do a transfer from checking account to cash account, then enter each purchase as you spend it. I'm not so great at tracking cash, so I categorize it as soon as I withdraw it (as fun money, or whatever I withdraw it for) then from there, I don't worry about it.

 

Most of our spending is done via debit cards because it is easier to track.