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Budgeting program: Experience with EveryDollar or anything else you love?


Janie Grace
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Dh and I are terrible at budgeting. Early in our marriage, we went to a Dave Ramsey class and we agree with all of his principles. We want to live without debt and have an emergency fund and all of that. We are just so bad and putting it into practice. I took over the finances a few years back and now our bills get paid on time (I use a spreadsheet to keep track of amounts and dates) but beyond that, our money still "tells us where it went" vs. us "telling it where to go." We want to start doing the latter so badly! I googled Dave Ramsey app and I'm looking at EveryDollar, but I'm sure there's other good stuff out there. 

Details (if it helps you recommend something that would work for us):

Dh gets paid every other week. It has been varying amounts based on commissions but he's about to change jobs and it will be steady (phew). I get paid once a month but have several clients and the amounts vary. We would like to put my pay into a separate fund for Christmas, vacations, etc. 

I pay bills online on my bank website. Some things I use checks for (medical bills, housecleaner, school expenses, tithing). I totally just wing it regarding groceries and other things (I don't know how much I spend, I just try to be careful). Obviously I need to go back and track everything so I can set up realistic budget categories and amounts. Open to doing cash if that's better.

I'm not sure what other info to include. Thanks for any reviews or suggestions.

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We like Everydollar.  But the app is set up to be kind of monthly, so for me, budgeting on a bi-monthly paycheck was hard.  It got easier when dh got paid weekly, even if he doesn't have a set paycheck.  We ended up taking a low average of pay and work based on that.
However, our biggest motivator and tool is a weekly budget meeting.  Dh and I sit down, talk about our goals for the week, what is coming up, what we need to take note of, everything.  Once a month we talk about the retirement accounts as well (any more than that and it just gets annoying). 

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I've played with budgeting tools, including Every Dollar and DR. My brain still works better with a paper list. I keep it in a page protector at the front of my financial binder.

Depending on how your bills are spread across the month, you might want to adjust to paying some "early".  Ours are pretty evenly spread, so each paycheck does cover the expenses for the two weeks after, except I have to keep the mortgage coming out of one and the health insurance coming out of the other, even though both are due on the 1st, because we do like to eat!  So health insurance is often paid 2-4 weeks in advance.  A lot of companies will let you change your due date, which can help, too.  But, eventually the every-other-week paychecks will screw with date-set bills.

For debt payoffs, I'm really liking Undebtit dot com.

I know all the details of my grocery bills as a matter of habit from when we had more difficult stretching money.  I do set my budget slightly higher than I typically spend as a buffer, but it goes toward debt when I stick to my usual purchases.

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38 minutes ago, scholastica said:

Take a look at YNAB. It is very intuitive and my dh loves entering expenses while he is still in the store, rather than having to keep track of receipts. I’ve never used EveryDollat so I can’t compare. YNAB works the way my brain works.

This. We love YNAB. They have a free trial (lasts just over a month).

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20 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

We like Everydollar.  But the app is set up to be kind of monthly, so for me, budgeting on a bi-monthly paycheck was hard.  It got easier when dh got paid weekly, even if he doesn't have a set paycheck.  We ended up taking a low average of pay and work based on that.
However, our biggest motivator and tool is a weekly budget meeting.  Dh and I sit down, talk about our goals for the week, what is coming up, what we need to take note of, everything.  Once a month we talk about the retirement accounts as well (any more than that and it just gets annoying). 

We have a weekly budget meeting as well. It helps so much and we both know everything that is going on and why.

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We are YNAB failures even though I expect it has been updated by now and offers many more options. It drove us crazy to have to enter a week's worth of bills and expenses. We dreaded doing it and therefore it was most often postponed rather than done.

We are now using a totally simple method. Spreadsheet with all the monthly bills listed by due dates. Easily editable if new bills need to be added or some are disappearing. 

Weekly we go over what is due the following week - most stuff is on either autopay or online pay. We always know what is due and how much can be set aside. Special bills like annual DMV registrations etc are entered on a calendar and included for that month.

We are happier and we have not missed any payments and we seem to be saving more as well. 

If there was a software (perhaps there is?) based on this simple approach I may consider it. Fairly sure Quickbooks would fit the bill but I don't want to pay that much for simple budgeting purposes. 

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Someone mentioned an app. I have the Every Dollar app on my phone. I'm sure there are fancier budgeting tools out there but we stick with Every Dollar because I can't wrap my brain around paying for a budget tool when I'm trying hard to NOT spend money, lol! It works just fine for our needs. I can load my receipts right in after each store on shopping day and split them between categories like grocery and household. 

We just finished the "getting a month ahead" process a few months ago and it has been a game changer. My dh also gets inconsistent check amounts and this "month ahead" plan completely eliminated the challenge of the random check amounts.

Maybe try a free budget tool for a couple of months and if its not doing the trick for you, bump up to a paid one. Good luck!

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11 hours ago, Liz CA said:

We are YNAB failures even though I expect it has been updated by now and offers many more options. It drove us crazy to have to enter a week's worth of bills and expenses. We dreaded doing it and therefore it was most often postponed rather than done.

We are now using a totally simple method. Spreadsheet with all the monthly bills listed by due dates. Easily editable if new bills need to be added or some are disappearing. 

Weekly we go over what is due the following week - most stuff is on either autopay or online pay. We always know what is due and how much can be set aside. Special bills like annual DMV registrations etc are entered on a calendar and included for that month.

We are happier and we have not missed any payments and we seem to be saving more as well. 

If there was a software (perhaps there is?) based on this simple approach I may consider it. Fairly sure Quickbooks would fit the bill but I don't want to pay that much for simple budgeting purposes. 

YNAB allows you to import transactions directly from your bank, so you don’t have to enter them manually.  You can also enter as you go. We don’t always enter the bills as we set them up to pay. We just budget for them. You do have to categorize them after the import, although after a bit it can tell that the category for Kroger is usually groceries and the gas company is gas and does it automatically for many transactions.

One cool thing is that it takes money from your budget category as you use your credit card and assigns it to the payment category for that credit card. So we always know how much of the money in the account is set aside for that.

OP, you can try out YNAB for 34 days free, so you’ll go through a few paychecks before you have to make a decision.

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I love YNAB and have used it for more than 10 years now. When I first started using it, they mostly forced you to budget a month ahead of time (in May you're spending the money you got in April) but that is no longer a requirement. You can use it without doing it that way anymore. 

But, if you can switch to budgeting to where you're spending last month's income  (we've had to take our tax return in years past to get us back to spending last month's income, it makes budgeting so much easier and paying bills less stressful because you know the money is there on the first of the month for all the bills that month. No more waiting for Friday's check to buy groceries for the next week, etc.

I tried Every Dollar and did not like it at all. And I do like most of the DR stuff, just not that app. I went back to YNAB after trying it. 

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15 hours ago, xixstar said:

I love YNAB and have used it for more than 10 years now. When I first started using it, they mostly forced you to budget a month ahead of time (in May you're spending the money you got in April) but that is no longer a requirement. You can use it without doing it that way anymore. 

But, if you can switch to budgeting to where you're spending last month's income  (we've had to take our tax return in years past to get us back to spending last month's income, it makes budgeting so much easier and paying bills less stressful because you know the money is there on the first of the month for all the bills that month. No more waiting for Friday's check to buy groceries for the next week, etc.

I tried Every Dollar and did not like it at all. And I do like most of the DR stuff, just not that app. I went back to YNAB after trying it. 

Spending last moths paycheck has definitely worked great for us.  Dh gets paid once a month, so as soon as he gets paid on the 1st I pay every bill that is due that month.  A couple of them are due early in the month and a couple are not even billed yet but I pay them early....If I don't pay a  bill on the 1st it doesn't get paid until the next month --generally.  So our bills get paid.

Our budget issues have to do with how we spend what is left after those bills are paid.  On paper it will seem as if it should last us through the month...but it usually doesn't.  My big goal is to not use my money for monthly bills or expenses....to save it for the big ticket items---taxes, car repair, and vacations, but honestly  I have been spending almost all of my paycheck too just to get through the month.  So we need to take a hard look at where we are exceeding the budget. 

I have tried Every dollar before...but I think at the time dh was getting paid every week...I found it hard to budget...so hopefully with the once a month paycheck I can do better.

I get hung up on silly things like.....he will get paid for May on May 31...and that money will pay June bills....but when I enter it into the budget it looks like it is suppose to handle May bills....do I just change the date on paycheck entry to June 1st?  

I would like to just not even enter my paycheck---it goes to a different account...and see what happens.  We have to get serious.  

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