I don't have a budget in traditional sense (Excel table with spending categories and amounts allocated for each, with regularly updated actual spent amounts). I just look at the balance of my checking account when I get the statement. If it goes down month over month, I know I need to cut spending.
Everything else is automated: scheduled transfers to savings, recurring mortgage payments, autopay for credit cards, etc.
I have my budget in a spreadsheet. Top line is income, then the rest are expenses. The spreadsheet is really just for projecting what fixed costs and savings I can afford, I don't follow it strictly.
The key thing is the way all my accounts are set up. All money flows into the checking account, and then automatic deductions take the savings into different accounts for short term and long term. Money does not sit in the checking account for long (except for a small-ish cushion.) All spending is done on credit cards, which I pay off in full with automatic payments from the checking account. This way, I know when I'm over-spending, because I have to transfer money back into the checking account. This is key, because it means as long it's planned (for a vacation, for example), it's fine. But if it's unplanned, I know I need to be more careful.
My general plan is to put everything I'm not going to spend in the current month in my savings and then gradually draw my checking account down to 0. (I have ING Direct and a credit line attached to my checking account in case of overdraft, so overshooting isn't a problem.) I usually keep track of my balance less my bills for the month and divide it by the number of days left in the pay period. Once that balance goes above a certain level I save more. I've been doing this since college, where I would stash away my student loans into savings and transfer monthly installments into my checking.
The video wasn't working for me when I went to the page, but if that's how the feature works, it might be neat to have that kind of thing better automated.
I have a budget on Excel (with 12-15 months planned) and download the data from my bank/credit card every month to assess how I'm doing vs the plan.
If I'm on a cash-tight period, I increase the assessment frequency accordingly. Typically, my biggest expenses are rent and groceries, so I pay closer attention to those.
You are right, I left out an important part of my budgeting setup: Every month, after income, everything above a set amount is transferred automatically into a savings account. So at the beginning of each month, I have the same amount of money in my checking account.
Still, even just the number going down tells me exactly how much money I have spent this month – like looking into my wallet would. But I have the added benefit of knowing what I spent it on even long after the purchase.
I don't always review the paper trail, only if my spending is higher than what I expected it to be. But I always check the balance before any bigger purchase. In both cases, I know to spend less in advance and can make an informed decision.
* I am translating from German here using some quick Google searches. I hope these account types make sense for a US reader.
I don't "budget" in the traditional sense of the word. Tried using these apps for a long time and they are either too complex or don't give me what I want.
I look at income and spend post-facto by once-a-month pulling in statements from my bank, card, and any other spend accounts (like venmo). I wrote a simple app to analyze this on a month-to-month basis.
I also use (and enjoy) YNAB. I have some manual accounts and some automatic. I suppose what I'm working on isn't even technically a budget so much as it is a forecast. But of course it'll still be only as accurate as the data it receives.
This is nice, but for budgets to be effective, they need to be across multiple time periods.
Budgeting is like an optimization/monitoring problem with 2 objectives:
1. monthly cash flow > 0 (don't ever let your cash situation go negative e.g. credit-card debt)
2. maximize(Year End final balance)
I have a Google Sheets doc that I've used for years where I have inflows and outflows by month, and a year-end balance that is automatically calculated. This lets me see what my projected cash status will be at the end of the year.
At every month, the cash flow (in - out) is calculated -- this prevents me from going underwater at any given period.
Having a dynamically updating spreadsheet helps you to monitor those two objective functions and make course-corrections.
It's simple, it's cloud-based and it's available on all devices.
I make a spreadsheet called 'Budget YYYY', typically some time between October and December I make the next year's version, and then these for each month.
The control panel tracks income, where it goes, what was budgeted and what was actually spent.
The Credit Card Balance sheets I use twice a month to get all balances, prompt me to review all statements, and mark all of that off. It’s self-contained and doesn’t impact the rest of the budget.
Income this period gets money added in when I get it.
For spending, I track a couple of categories:
- Yearly / Bi-Annual Bills: Anything that happens not monthly. Domain registrations, car insurance, etc.
- Variable recurring bills: things that I have to pay, but don’t know how much they will be. Electric bill, water bill, etc. I rough-estimate these, and the longer I’ve lived at a place the more accurate I get.
- Static Recurring Bills: Things that are the same every month. Rent, subscription services,
- Grocery Expenses: Anything related to grocery shopping for food / household supplies.
- Restaurants: I explicitly break restaurants out into its own category to better let me see how much money I spend eating out, this is new this year.
- Travel Expenses: When I travel for work, I track things here, and then track the reimbursement.
- Other: Random spending money.
Then for savings I have boxes for:
Savings Account Deposits: I keep a number of savings account set aside for specific purposes, I record deposits into them here.
Savings Account Withdrawls: If I’m using extra money this month for something, I add it as income, and then debt it as a savings account withdrawl. For example, Christmas I made a withdrawal for money from savings, then added it as income, then recording the items bought under “Other”.
http://ledger-cli.org/
I tend to put things into categories like food, electronics, bills, etc and can run a report each month to see how much was spend in each category. I can also determine how much was left at the end of the month and transfer that amount to savings after the first paycheck of the new month has come in.
My strategy:
* use mint.com for budgeting and expense tracking.
* a budget line item is "savings".
* set up an automated transfer from my direct deposit checking account to my savings account.
* fire and forget.
I keep my household budget in a simple spreadsheet.
I don't track my daily spend at all. Instead, I have a personal account for daily/casual spending and use that. All other money goes into a different account. This way, the budget item is the amount of money I put into the "daily" card every payday.
But my daily/casual spend is really stable from day-to-day so it doesn't need tracking. I already know what it is. Others may have more volatility to track.
Having spent a bunch of time with GnuCash, YNAB, and budgetsimple, I've given up trying to have a formal budget. Instead, my wife and I just spend 20 minutes every 2 weeks looking at our accounts and talking about any big expenses that we have coming up.
To add, if you need some structure in setting up a budget, there’s a tool to help manage this and track expenses against that budget called YNAB (You Need A Budget).
I find it incredibly helpful for making sure I’m spending money the way I intend to. It’s very easy to otherwise forget how much is going where.
Spreadsheet with one sheet per year and one row per day and one column per account or category. Use bank bill pay and schedule payment when I receive a bill or auto-schedule for fixed items. I only worry about the daily balance when it goes below $1000.
Everything else is automated: scheduled transfers to savings, recurring mortgage payments, autopay for credit cards, etc.
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