budgeting

[LadyFaile]

i think it's been discussed before bot not recently so i thought i'd bring it up again.
one of the best/easiest ways to save money is obviously to budget. for those of you who do budget are you able to stick to it, and how specifically do you do it?
a few times i've sat and gone over our bills, expenses, and income and come up with a budget on ms excel on the computer. according to my figures we were in a position to be able to save up to $700 at the end of the month and put it towards our debt or a savings account. yet there we were at the end of every month with no money left. we even saw a financial adviser at the bank and she couldn't really tell us anything helpful. her great advise was for me to find a higher paying job. cause it's just that easy :p
cheques aren't really used around here anymore so i don't have a chequebook to keep track of expenses as i make them. for those of you who do still use chequebooks is it helpful or do you forget to update it? i'm considering getting some kind of little organizer to carry with me so i can keep track of our expenses and figure out where our money's going.
i mean i know where the majority of it goes but it's those few bucks here and there that you don't think about at the time that add up at the end of the month and leave you wondering where your money went.

we're also really bad with remembering to pay bills on time. the one helpful thing our adviser did was tell us that we can set up our online banking to make small weekly payments into each bill instead of one lump sum at the time it's due. that way we never fall behind, see less impact on our paycheques, and sometimes even end up with a credit on those accounts that we can use on a month when things are tight and we want to skip a payment. pretty good idea really and it worked for a couple months. we moved back to our hometown, in with hubby's parents. he wants to go bck to school and we can't pay rent and put him through school at the same time so we're mooching for a bit so he can go to school and we can build up some savings towards our own house. great idea in theory but somehow we're still leaching money. no rent and still no money at the end of the month. mind you he's taken quite a pay cut but we should still be able to make our bills and have some extra money to put into savings??!!

bleh

oh and we got an e-savings account. new thing from our bank, it's pretty awesome. any time you want to withdraw or purchase from that account it costs you $5.00 which discourages us from using it. to transfer money to and from with our online banking is free and there's no fees. and high interest. woot. the plan was to put as much as we could into it every month and let it build up interest, and that was supposed to be a downpayment for a house.
haha we've had it for like 3 months and there's still only 40 bucks in it. :p

[Marie]

Pay your bills first, then put money into your savings account.. then give yourself an allowance out of what's left over.

[karenlovessnow]

I always hear that you are supposed to pay yourself first and then go from there.

[nogardsram]

My wife and I have kind of a budget.

At the beginning of each month we take out cash:
$200 for food
$20 for entertainment (movies, etc)
$20 personal for me
$20 personal for wife

We pay a check for our rent and water/sewer/garbage
We have auto-pay for phone and other services and loans.

We don't really eat out and we usually put anything we need or want on a 'wish list' for awhile. If it's still on the wish list after many months and we keep wanting it the whole time, we'll consider buying it. If after some time (maybe even a year or so) we realize we only want it once or twice we figure it's not worth it.

Other than that, we don't spend, either in check or in debit cards (we also don't have a credit card). We try to ask the other person what they think before ever using any other money, like recently our blender broke, so we decided we use it every day, it was important enough to buy.

Anyways, I've found having cash budgeted (we keep them in different wallets/bags) helps us not spend money, rather than just trying to use checks or debit cards.

[Quinoa]

i mean i know where the majority of it goes but it's those few bucks here and there that you don't think about at the time that add up at the end of the month and leave you wondering where your money went.
Try to collect all receipts, and write down all expenses for which you usually do not get a receipt too, to keep track of everything.
I also have auto-pay for the rent and gas/electrics, and gave a direct debit authority to the phone companies etc. This is rather safe here because in case of doubt that there is something wrong with the bill you can still reclaim the sum.
The sum which I estimated to (theoretically) remain at the end of the month goes to a savings account by automatic transfer too. That way I am less tempted to spend it, at least not all of it… I think our banking system is a lot different though (for example we do not get any real “pay checks”, but most people get their salary by money transfer from the employers account to their account), so I’m not sure all of this is common/possible where you live.

nogardsram, your budget impresses me!
USD 20 (your entertainment budget) is less than EUR 14… That will buy you about one cinema ticket and a softdrink here, or an average paperback, or if you’re lucky two museum tickets (sometimes have had to pay more for just one though). USD 200 for food for 2 would be impossible here for vegans (not indicating that a healthy vegan diet is more expensive than a balanced omnivore diet, but crappy omni stuff definitely is the cheapest option here).

[karenlovessnow]

nogardsram, your budget impresses me!



Me too! I am so jealous. I s*ck at sticking to a budget. :(

[Beancounter]

If you "don't know where your money is going" then chances are, your not recording all of your expenditures.

One thing I have found is that people tend to forget to record small purchases, and/or don't save receipts for cash transactions. This isn't insignificant. $5 here, $10 there, and $2 over there, and before you know it your $700 evaporates into thin air.

Purchase a program like Quicken, and make a committement to save all receipts and enter every transaction. you may be suprised what you find out about your spending habits. Also, do a bank recon each month. Some banks are pretty sneaky with fees.

[Wolfie]

I always hear that you are supposed to pay yourself first and then go from there.

That's what my dad always said and if there's anything my dad did well, it was save money.

I need to start following his advice.

[kazyeeqen]

I follow a budget too. What really seems to work for us is not to use our debit cards much. We have cash, and we "pretend" that is all the money we have. When I open my wallet and see 10$, and I know that is all the money I have, I am much less inclined to make a purchase that isn't something I really want.

Cash allowance, then the rest in the bank and to bills (especially debt, cause that is just going to keep costing you). Food easily gets out of hand too, unless you are really careful. When we used the debit card for food we counted it up and figured out we spent 650-750$ a month on food for two people. Once we realized that and payed attention, we cut that amount in half. We just bought whatever we wanted, not paying attention to what it cost, and there was a lot of expensive packaged foods, out of season or just expensive fruit, and waste. Now we have priorities.

Good luck!

[synergy]

5% of my paycheck goes directly into an RRSP, with my work matching that amount.

Then I have a $200 biweekly withdrawl from my checking account to my ING investment savings account.

I withdraw about $60 a month in cash for cash only expenditures, and I put absolutely everything else on my credit card, including my cell phone, car insurance and electricity bill.

Every month I can see exactly how much I am spending, and I get airmiles.
I pay off the charges every month (sometimes even a little more so I have a credit on the account).

Every year, I can take a free trip somewhere with the airmiles :)

[kazyeeqen]

^^^ That sounds sweet, I have thought of getting a credit card to get airmiles, but I don't hardly spend any money... It all comes out of direct deposit. I guess I could take it all off direct deposit and put everything on a credit card that I then pay off. It would be a little extra work, but I could think of it as a job that I get paid in airmiles for... :)

[Beachbnny]

^^^ That sounds sweet, I have thought of getting a credit card to get airmiles, but I don't hardly spend any money... It all comes out of direct deposit. I guess I could take it all off direct deposit and put everything on a credit card that I then pay off. It would be a little extra work, but I could think of it as a job that I get paid in airmiles for... :)

Ditto! Synergy that's amazing! We've discussed paying the mortgage through an airmiles reward CC program. It's a huge amount each month and we're going to pay it anyway so it would be nice to see a little return on that.

Our budgetting skills are little to none. We manage to pay the bills and *usually* sack about 500-1000/month into savings and then we just spend the rest. I guess we figure we're saving so it's ok to spend whatever is left on dinners out, movies, bar tabs etc.

I hated Quicken but should look into it again since it would be nice right now to manage our funds better.

[chryssiie718]

We have no money to "budget". :D I pay the bills (most of them), we get food and gas for the car, and wait for the next paycheck, when I pay more bills, etc. all over again. Savings?? whats that?? :lol:

[*AHIMSA*]

We have no money to "budget". :D I pay the bills (most of them), we get food and gas for the car, and wait for the next paycheck, when I pay more bills, etc. all over again. Savings?? whats that?? :lol:
Yeah, same here. If it weren't for credit cards... :cry: I can't wait to be done with school.

[LadyFaile]

that's the thing, it's tight now and hubby wants to go back to school in september. he'd be working part time, working up more debt. if it's tight now i shudder to think what that's going to be like.
so we really want to work hard between now and september to get some savings built up in case we need it while he's in school and maybe even to pay down our current loan a little more so the bank might not laugh at him when he asks for a student loan =p

i used to get paid weekly with an actual cheque. it was kinda nice cause i'd go to the bank to cash it and would take out $20. that was my spending money for the week. most of the time i didn't use it all and would carry it over to the next week and either not withdraw any or add it to the usual 20 to splurge on something for myself or have lunch downtown with a friend or something.
now i get paid biweekly and with direct deposit. we never go to the bank, we do all our bills etc online. i think we'll need to make it part of our routine to hit the bank once a week to take out cash for whatever purchases we plan to make through the week and whatever's left for extra spending. it's too easy to swipe that debit card and i often catch myself not even looking at the amount when i go to pay, which is sorta scary. it's like i don't even realize it's money.
don't get me wrong, i don't shop for myself and blow money on useless things, i'm extremely overdue for new clothes, shoes, etc, and i put off haircuts until i can't stand it anymore cause i hate spending the money. i don't even rent movies, we have movie channels so we'll watch whatever's on even if we've already seen it rather than blow money on rentals. we did splurge and rent a couple one night but it's not something we do very often anymore. i used to get free rentals from my old job but before that we used to rent every weekend. when i think back to how much money we blew on movies and snacks every weekend.. bleh.

we always talked about doing the cash thing. taking out the amount we knew we could spend on groceries etc and if the bill came up to more than what we had, put something back.
but we're weak and would probably just debit it. we'd have to make a conscious effort to leave our debitcards at home for that to work.

[Fritemare]

Well, here is what we do to make sure we save money:

When his pay check first comes, $500 automatically is put into our savings account. We then deduct all of the bills for the month out of what is left, and go from there. The money we put in savings is NOT allowed to come back out unless it is an emergency.

If you have to, take out cash to buy groceries. Bring a calculator with you and make sure you don't go over the amount you have allowed yourself. Leave your debit/credit card at home and only bring cash when buying groceries.

We've been doing this since the beginging of the year and our savings had $0 now we have $1500. Not too bad so far. We're trying to pay our house off next January so we're pinching pennies around here.

[barefootchick]

I agree with karenlovessnow. I suck at budgeting and saving money. I finally realized that I had to take little baby steps to budget my money.

Recently, as in the last paycheck I got, I started out with the total and wrote down everything I had to do with that money. I put $300 into savings. $200 of that savings goes towards the rent and/or bills at the end of the month because I'll get paid at least two more times before the end of the month. The other $100 was for the road trip I'm taking in March. I also had to pay three bills and buy groceries. When everything added up, I had $20 to myself, which I took out as cash, and $20 left in my checking account.

I'll have to see how the rest of the month goes. I'm trying to curb my impulse spending and trying to save up money for necessary things, such as taking the cat to the vet and going to the dentist.

[nookle]

We also don't really have money to save at this point, and the budget has to be pretty tight or **** will hit the fan. The thing that I have found that works the best for organizing is to use a wall calendar with big spaces for the days, and write every amount of money that will be coming in (I usually go 3 or 4 months ahead) on the day it actually will be in your possession. Once you've done that, you can go ahead and write in how much money goes where, and how much you have to spend. If you do this in advance, it makes things a heck of a lot easier - you just go look at the calendar, and pay the bills you're supposed to pay that day. Boom. Done. This system had actually allowed me to pay my bills early a lot of the time. We probably have less money now than we ever have, but we are less screwed than we've ever been. Now, if only I can keep this system up once the $$ituation improves - and I'll be all set!

[LadyFaile]

that's not a bad idea i might look into that

[Bracket.]

I'm an absolute financial geek. I can probably give you {off the top of my head} a basic accounting of what hubby and I have in each account at any given time, heh. Therefore, bare with me as I will likely ramble on.

We budget, and give ourselves a set amount of money for each non-bill item {food, household items, entertainment/eating out/spending, gas etc}. Then we take that money out in cash every pay check. Once it's gone, it's gone. That keeps us from spending other money that should be going into savings. I also keep every receipt, and have a running spreadsheet with what we're spending in various categories. At a glance I can see what we spend and where. We are debt-free {except the mortgage, which is on a 15 year fixed}. We save 15% of our income toward retirement, and $2000/year toward our son's education. We have an emergency fund of 6 months' salary, in case anything happens which puts one of us out of work. We also have "sinking funds" for various anticipated expenses/emergencies {car repairs, house repairs etc}. If we want something, we save up for it and pay cash. We are currently saving up for a second car. People think we're insane. We are, and we're fully aware that we're very strange, but hey -- we don't have a car payment, and they do, heh. Any "leftover" money either gets dumped into a high yield savings account with ING.com that is waiting to be invested into index funds, or gets sent in toward the principle on the house.

I'm not trying to brag, or sound like we're perfect. We're not. Our budget is very ample for spending money. We don't eat out much, but I spend a TON of money every month on groceries because we like gourmet food. I spend an amount on video games every month that would make most of you cry. We are frugal and smart in some areas so we can splurge in others. That's what being frugal is all about -- saving money in order to enrich your life as a whole. :up:

However, not too long ago we were in the worst of worst situations. We were flat broke college students with tons of student loans, credit cards...the whole shabang. When we got out of school we got serious, paid off our debt, and started taking control of our financial future. It's only about 3 - 4 years since we graduated, but things are great now. Anyone can do it, we are not special or over-talented or smarter than anyone else. Everyone can live their dreams. </corny speech> ;)

My best suggestions for budgeting:

1. Pay cash for everything that is not a regular bill. Get a finite amount of cash every paycheck, and don't spend more than that.

2. Keep receipts for EVERYTHING and come up with some system of tracking that makes sense for you. Make sure you review regularly the amount of money you're spending on various thing, and make adjustments as you see fit.

3. Save an emergency fund. Save up $1000 - 2500 that is only to be touched in case of extreme emergency. That way, if you have an issue, you can "borrow money from yourself" instead of from a credit card at a high interest rate.

4. Pay off your debt. Snowball your debt payments. {If you want more info on that, I can go into detail.}

5. Check out Dave Ramsey and his principles. He has excellent ideas for money management which he delivers with a kind of blunt humor that is irresistable.

So what if you're weird! You don't want to be like everyone else...everyone else is broke.

I could go on for ages about this kind of thing. Let me know if you want more advice/information/budget help. I'm always happy to help in any way I can.

You can do this though! Seriously. Anyone can. The first step is being aware.

[LadyFaile]

lots of good tips there thanks.
we've talked about doing the cash thing before and i think it might help. it's so easy to swipe a card and forget about it.

we went to the bank yesterday and talked to someone. we changed our loan payment to come out every 2 weeks instead of monthly and added a couple extra bucks to the payment amount so it'll get paid off a bit quicker but splitting the payment up will seem easier to deal with since we get paid every two weeks.
temporarily reduced the amount going into rrsp's for now until we get caught up, the extra is going into savings. we're anticipating some harsh times while hubby's in school and working part time, we want to build up as much savings as possible before then to fall back on if we need to. he'll be able to work full time during the summer to replace whatever we spend through the school year. otherwise i don't see how we can survive :sweat:

we made up a budget on excel and if we stick to it we should have a couple hundred bucks each month. a good chunk is going to our high interest savings the rest we'll keep in the chequing account in case we need it so we don't have to use anything from savings until we have to.
we also hope we can build that savings enough to get a downpayment on a house. with a small down payment right now we'd barely qualify for a small mortgage, if we build up a decent sized downpayment we'll be better off.
oh yeah and we have potential of getting pretty decent bonuses at work so we're not budgeting those at all anything we make outside of our regular pay will get split between savings and the loan.

i think we're on the right track ... maybe

[nogardsram]

Good luck! :up: