Making a budget

lisar wrote: Okay so a friend of mine who is not good with money asked me to make a budget for her and her dh. I can manage my money just fine as in getting the bills paid after that I blow it all. However she wants me to budget out her money for pay periods and all but I am not good at that. Can someone help me if I send you the info? I am just no good at making telling her what to pay with what check and all that.

mummy2girls replied: im good at budgetting. When i was single mom i budgetted my pay of only 1500 a mont hthat i use to get as a nanny... and i budgetted our wedding so we dont owwe anyone anything.. that was difficult...LOL

DVFlyer replied: Budgeting 101:

Take what you earn and write it down.

Take all of your "necessary" bills (rent, electricity, car payments, insurance etc) and write it down.

Subtract the two.

Whatever is left is what you have to work with.

Take half of that amount and put it into a "me savings" account at the bank. This will be a way to "pay yourself" every month. If you can have this amount automatically taken out of your check all the better. This money is not to be touched.

The other half is what you can play with.

Budgeting 102:

After completing Budgeting 101, take a piece of paper and start to record every expense.... every one. No matter how small or large, write it down. Every ATM withdraw... including the fee you paid because you "weren't close to your own ATM".

At the end of a month or two, add it up... VERY revealing.

Hillbilly Housewife replied: I'm a pro-budgeter, too.

Excel is my best friend.

my2girls replied: Well you need to know the due dates of those bills.
Like when is mortgage due, electric, gas, phone , cable etc.

Also break up the food and gasoline bill for 2 pay periods.

Our food/personal items are $450 a month so I break that down to $225 a pay period.
Gasoline is less than $80 a month so I break that down to $35 a pay period.

On the 1st pay period most of that money goes to the big bills because most of my bills are due before the 15th.
So mortgage, gas, trash/water, car insurance, food, Netflix and gasoline are on the 1st.
HOA payment, cable/phone, electric, gasoline, gym membership, piano lessons and food are on the 15th.

Misc. spending comes AFTER savings and bills.

We have a set amount of money that comes out of my dh's check and goes to a Money Market account. Then bills get paid and then we have misc. spending of $100-$200 a month. That is for eating out, movies, books, activities for the kids, etc.

My3LilMonkeys replied: I use an Excel sheet as well. I have an overall "plan" based on averages that says in a month we earn x, we have to pay all our bills and their average amounts, we have x for groceries, x for household needs, x for gas etc etc - that is just to keep me on track of how much we should be spending and I also use it to keep track of how much debt we have left since paying that down is my #1 priority this year.

Then I have an individual monthly budget I set up at the beginning of each month showing pay coming in and money going out where I can flex stuff around - so if for example our electric bill is higher than normal I make our miscellaneous money lower or if say we've been $40 under budget on gas for the last few months I lower the gas budget and pay extra on a credit card.

Oh, and the best tip I have is to live on less paychecks than you get. For example, DH and I each get paid every other week which is 26 times a year for a total of 52 paychecks. Most months we get 4 paychecks but 4 months out of the year we get 5. I have my budget set up based on 4 paychecks a month so in those lucky 5 pay months I have a whole extra paycheck to use to pay off debt, put aside for vacation/christmas or just put into a savings account.

If you want to send it to me I'd be glad to set something up or I could send you a blank copy of my excel sheets if you'd like to play around with them.

HuskerMom replied: Something else that we do that really works well for us is using envelops. We pay the bills each payday and do our big grocery shopping trip. We put some money in the emergency fund too. Then we have several envelops we put a little extra money in for certain things. We have a grocery one for things we run out of before the next payday, we have a gas envelop, and a fun one. Once the money in them is gone then we HAVE to wait til the next payday. The only checks we write are bills and we never go through the ATM. We had a bad habit of forgetting to write down withdrawls from the ATM. Sometimes I wish the fun envelop had a bit more in it though. But our envelops work really good.

PrairieMom replied:
oohhh we should compare spreadsheets. Mine has lots of color.

Hillbilly Housewife replied:
LOL

so does mine!!!

DVFlyer replied:
Let's just hope that color isn't red

PrairieMom replied:
the bad parts are.

Kaitlin'smom replied: hummm I might need to see one of these, I need to work on mine.

DVFlyer replied:
Format> Cells> Number Tab> Number Category> Pick the first option for negative numbers... Voila! No more Red. Just that hardly noticeable "-" sign.

PrairieMom replied:
yeah, but the red makes me feel bad,
I may not notice that hardly noticeable - sign .

Hillbilly Housewife replied: Happy to say I have no red in mine.

lisar replied: Can someone send me a blank one to use? With all the formats already in it. I hate making them I know how I just hate making them. Let me know and I will send you my e-mail address

PrairieMom replied: i think i can, I will try anyway...

lisar replied:
I am Pm'ing you my e-mail address

My3LilMonkeys replied: Tara, I am PMing you my email as well if you wouldn't mind sending it to me as well. I've been playing around with ideas to improve mine and maybe seeing yours will help me.