Lately I seem to love creating random rules for myself and then seeing if I can follow them. In the last couple months I made up a freakishly long Lent to do list that I had to finish before Easter (a success, besides the major case of OCD it gave me) and am quitting the internet for awhile. Which is seriously refreshing. My way of life must be catching, because Kent is now doing it for himself too. He’s giving up a few things this month and I made him a calendar where he gets a smiley face sticker every day he succeeds (which he informed me will be every day.) Every night he says to me, “Somebody deserves a sticker!” and I have to put one on for him.
This month, we’ve also decided to budget. On the first day of the month we took out a certain amount of money that we think we can live off of for the month, and that’s what we have for the month for everything besides all of our bills. It includes groceries, subway tokens, gas, and all of those extra things that always add up like crazy. We can’t use any credit cards or debit cards whatsoever. It will be interesting to see if we can do it or not… although the amount we gave ourselves is definitely not sustainable because it doesn’t leave us room for very many extra, fun things that cost money. Next month we’ll have to take that into account.
In a way this feels like a game more than anything (but a game that we take seriously!) We aren’t anything like the couples on Til Debt Do Us Part who are ridiculously in debt with huge spending addictions, and if we fail we will not be out on the streets. Which is good, really, because the jar system they use on that show would confuse the heck out of me. I think it’s just a good way for us to learn to manage our money as a team and think about each other and our long term goals first and foremost and save as much as we can. Neither of us have bad spending habits in the first place, really.
Do you budget, either as an individual or as a couple? If so let me know what your plan is. And if you feel like answering this, how much would you give yourself to spend per month if you were using our system?
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It really depends. I would have to sit down and budget out – how many times am I riding the subway this month? What deals are on, grocery wise? What kind of food do I have in my cupboard and how long – realistically – is the food I buy going to last? How much am I driving? Whats the price of gas? What amount of money fills up my tank? And on and on and on and on…..
For me, though, I try to least have 1.72$ anytime I’m going somewhere so I can pick up a coffee. This doesn’t always happen though. =(
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We definitely didn’t put that much thought into it, but we know without thinking too hard what all of these things cost us. If you’re that detailed you should definitely start budgeting! I bet you’d be good at it.
Oh and I forgot to mention – that is, other than groceries or bills or transit passes, what I give myself to spend on myself daily.
.-= Sarah´s last blog ..Yeah! OOC funding approved!! =-.
Your budgeting scheme sounds like one of my favorite shows that I always watch lunch times: Til Debt Do Us Part! Do you watch that? That’s definitely how I learned most of my budgeting. I’m a pro now, if I do say so myself. (omg never mind. I wrote this comment before i saw your last paragraph. HAH!)
When I first started budgeting. I used strictly cash, and had my cash “labeled” in my wallet: $xx for food, $xx for bus, etc. Now I know my budget so well that I put everything on my PC Financial MasterCard and end up getting a butt-load of points per month. Which in turn, is valuable for me because points = free groceries.
hah.. all of the budgeters I know love that show! I actually don’t love it that much… I dislike seeing how terrible some people are at life. Once I do watch an episode I get into it, but that doesn’t happen that often.
i sort of do something like this, but it’s weekly instead of monthly. i give myself $100 M-F and $100 on weekends for food/fun/transportation/drinking/etc and then i have a slush fund (usually $300ish a month) for extra expenses or if i… really need new shoes or a dress! the rest of my money goes to rent/bills/savings and i track it all per pay cheque in this crazy little notebook because i just can’t be bothered to mess with excel!
i make a new budget for every pay cheque i get–i find it so much easier to stick to bi-weekly budgets when i can map in certain events or needs ahead of time, instead of say, suddenly realizing i had booked a hair appointment and i have no money for it! it’s been almost a year since i started doing this, and i loooove it.
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Hmm… I really like your biweekly budgeting schedule. Especially since both Kent and I get paid the exact same day. I feel like it would make budgeting easier, since on ours we estimated how much we make a month but it’s really not exact because months aren’t exactly two weeks. Although since all of my paycheques aren’t the same that way wouldn’t work out perfectly either.
You also give yourself a lot more than we do… I definitely need to up it next month! I can’t live like this! lol
also: i like to make my budgets on friday nights while drinking wine and watching Til Debt Do We Part as it’s soooooo mentally soothing. haha!
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I an curious about how much you give yourself a month because i would love to do this but i feel like i would end up running out of money for essentials (like gas or food) before the month is over. perhaps if i looked at how much i usually spend a month and cut out extras. This is a fun and good idea!
We gave ourselves, this month, $800. Which like I said isn’t sustainable since it’s for both of us and includes groceries and gas. Technically we could live off of this but it doesn’t really leave room for too much else. I guess we’ll have to sit down at the end of the month and figure it out again.
We budget to an extent but my b/f is WAY more of a spender than I am so we also both have our own bank accounts.
Let’s see, for both of us, groceries, fun, gas. I’d say at least $1,000 for the month.
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I think $1000 sounds more realistic than $800. Maybe we’ll try that next month.
I can’t believe you gave up the Internet for a while! I would never be able to do that!
Its a great feeling when you get things done and cross them off your check list eh?! Congrats with the budgeting as well.. one more step closer to being financially free, responsible and independent! And perhaps closer to retirement too
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To be honest I’m cheating a bit on the internet thing but I am cutting back a LOT which was the main thing. I’m filling my time with some other projects which feels really good.
We definitely budget but it’s not down to the day or month or anything. We just know how much to set aside for bills, paying off student debt and savings every month, then we have the rest to live on. So far, so good.
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We have been following a budget since we combined finances and it makes things incredibly easy. We tracked our spending and estimated to make a monthly budget that falls within our average income. I know I’ll get two paychecks a month, same for him. There’s some rollover wiggle room in between months but we’re down to a pretty good system for ourselves.
We though, never ever use cash. Or try to use it as rarely as possible. This allows us to track our spending closely and see where we have holes that may be leaking money.
We budget about $975 for non-fixed items which includes: all groceries $250, eating out $75, alcohol or bars $40, utilities (which change drastically monthly) $200, gas $110, incidental health costs $20, his mine & ours entertainment $130, pet costs $50, and miscellaneous shopping at $100. Other areas that are fixed are rent, internet, health insurance, life insurance, car insurance, student loan and our fixed credit card payment (we are currently “snowballing” our debt).
We keep track using our online banking and mint.com with an excel spreadsheet. We have a lot of our income going to getting out of debt so anything left over at the end of the month will mostly go towards that (categories like entertainment, eating out, alcohol). For categories that may be more expensive one month and nonexistent the other months we allow them to rollover in our checking account and take it into account on the next month’s budget. Right now we have a lot of rollover in our pet and utilities sections. That allows us to know we have the money on hand if our animal needs to go to the vet or for when we start to run the air conditioning in the summer and our electric bill spikes.
Sometimes we consciously over spend in an area and this method also lets us account for that. If we really want to go out to a fancy dinner and we’ll over spend in food, we can cut back money from another disposable area like shopping.
I love budgeting though. I’m one of those women who has excel sheets for everything and tracks my grocery store buys so I can keep tabs on when something is really on sale. My husband calls me the house manager and it’s not far off. We’ve read a lot from Dave Ramsey so we try to end up with as much as possible left over in each category at the end of the month. I like to think we over-budget in some areas simply so we never find ourselves scrambling to find the rent money after paying the bills. With that extra left over each month we can also save it for a special expense we know is coming like a wedding, hair salon appointment, or summer road trip vacation.
We do something similar to Paiiige. Each of us gets a weekly cash allowance, on our pay day and then the same day the following week. I also make bi-weekly budgets for 3 paychecks at a time, and kind of adjust them a little as I go. When I look at how much I planned on putting in savings for a period, I am set on making it happen, so everything else has to work around that.
At the start of each year I try to map outa loose monthly budget, which is how I determined what our weekly allowances should be. (Allowance includes all food, entertainment, gas, clothes.)
Wow, $800-$1,000 a month? I’m not a penny pincher, and that seems like a TON of money. Am I missing something? We spend about $100 per week on groceries and $160 for gas per month (4 fill-ups). If I say $30 for one meal out per week, that’s another $120. I’m still only at $680. For entertainment we usually do Redbox ($1 per movie) or the cheap theaters ($3) or hang out with friends (free, except for the $10 bottle of wine we might bring). I know that stuff doesn’t add up to $120-320 per month.
To be fair, I’m not adding in our travel money. We take long weekend trips usually every other month. I realize most people don’t do that though, so I didn’t include it.
Pretend I’m not your mother here. Why don’t you try, for one month, to keep track of your spending. See how much you are spending and on what. DON’T just up the limit to $1000 because someone else thinks that is right for them. You have to figure out what is reasonable and expectable for you. And just because you find that you spent $945 this month does not mean that is what your limit should be. I thinnnkk you are thinking of someday buying a house. You want to save for that- you need to decide if that becomes your priority- if so, then something else- movies, random pub nights, or whatever, may have to be done less often. Budgeting is not all about the upper limit- you have to think about living within your means too.
No soapbox here, just offering you youngsters some old people advice!
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