Spending Habits

Question

Help! Any good articles or tips on how to manage a budget or decide how budgets should be broken down?

Ruzana Glaeser · Answer

The first and most important thing in any change of behavior is acknowledgement, meaning you need to understand what your current spending is like. 
You don't need to go any farther than Excel to get this going. 
Sit down and make different categories of expenditures you incur. For example, for us it's: mortgage, natural gas, electricity, city, waste, internet, cellular, fuel, child/care, car insurance (etc), food, clothes (for each person), medical, gym membership, eating out, movies, netflix, spending money, etc. You need to get down to the details of what are all your bills you must bay (insurance, utilities, mortgage, etc), and then you need to understand how much you have that is discretionary (clothing, entertainment) and then you can dial on what discretionary is.

We then take cash out for any discretionary spending and work off cash system, because it's easy to put things on the card and run up that bill, but if your cash is running out, then you will  notice how your behavior shifts and all of a sudden you aren't grabbing everything at Target, or running through Starbucks.

Obviously, you will need to have Income and then just start subtracting as you have the bills. We have a bi-weekly budget, because that's what works for us.

Good luck!

brideytracy · Answer

There is a great app called 'Mint' that budgets your money and sends reminders for upcoming bills. Super helpful if you're looking for a personal budget!

Amy Dalton · Answer

personal or business budgets?

Hope Angel Williams · Answer

My current combination is: Personal Capital (easy-to-use money management, which I prefer over Mint) and Excel/Sheets to visualize how I'm pacing toward my goals on a regular basis

At it's simplest: keep track of what money is coming in (income) and going out (expenses) then try to shift your investments into less liabilities (costs you money) toward more assets (makes you money).

Personally, my time and energy have become more valuable than saving a buck here and there so I now start making my decisions with those factors considered to for the short- and long-term benefit. From working hard and smart, I've been able to budget for donations which may seem silly to some, but to me it's a privileged priority that I'm happy to contribute to regularly.

That being said, I also leverage my trusted network and cautiously research everything before doing so that I can stay informed of opportunities to make more output (time, energy, resources) with less input.

Francesca Vanderwall · Answer

I'd suggest starting with your spending over the past 3 months. Look at it, understand it, but don't judge it. Once you know that, you can start figuring out where to improve. It takes a lot of discipline, practice, and time. Let us know how we can help!

Maggie B · Answer

I have a friend who doesn't carry any cards on her, and instead takes out cash on pay day and uses that as her discretionary food/snacks/movies/entertainment fund.  Smart!

Kelseyannb · Answer

The basics of how I do it are as follows:
1. I call it a 'spending plan' versus a budget.
2. I create a 'fixed' column with monthly bills that don't really change much month over month and a 'variable' column with things that do change. In each group, I then create a 'projected' column for how much I think it's going to cost and then an 'actual' column for how much it did cost. I have a template and create a new sheet in google docs each month to compare those two. 
3. In a separate place, I list my income and also which day auto things come out.

This is just one idea for how to track and consider your expenses.

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