budget

[kismet09]

1. Figure out how much we rake in 2 normal pay cycles (which amounts to 4 weeks), subtract $50 or so, round off to a multiple of 10, and call that our income.

2. Figure out how much comes out in bills each month, add about $100, call that the bills budget.

3. Divide the rest of the money into budget subcategories, which are currently Groceries, Food, Gas, Misc, Me, Tim, Dates, Farmer's Market.

4. Post a piece of paper with each of the categories (Bills, plus all those other ones) on the fridge with pretty magnets. Every time money comes out of the account, write the date and the place and the amount, and subtract from the amount that's currently in that budget line.

5. Check on a weekly or so basis that everything's coming out from where it should be (aka verify against online visa and bank statements).

6. At end of fiscal month, transfer any extra to savings or use to pay off credit card. Save records from online statements to a spreadsheet workseet, categorize every expense, check against fridge-record, note amounts spent and amount over/under budget in main worksheet.

I think the hardest part was choosing subcategories. They're based roughly on how much we were already spending in each amount. They aren't necessarily "fair" (I get 3 times the amount on my budget line than Tim does, but really, I'm more enamored of buying things, so it works out). Food and groceries ended up getting split up because $400 in one account line made it too tempting to spend a lot in the first two weeks, but two separate $200 amounts seems easier to manage, and I know that I can transfer from one "account" to another if needed. "Dates" got separated out for much the same reason (most of that ends up being food, too).

This doesn't mean that I'm good at budgeting this way. I've managed to be under budget (spent less than earned) about 3 of the past 9 months. Luckily, we have tax returns, and Tim's extra jobs that aren't factored in to the main budget -- I need to have these fall-back stashes (which are really all supposed to go to savings, but occasionally get borrowed from and paid back) to bail myself out from time to time.

Oh, and in case you're wondering how the breakdown of money works, here's the rough percentage that each category gets of our money:

Bills = 60%
My fund = 7%
Tim's fund = 2%
Food = 5%
Groceries = 5%
Misc = 11%
Dates = 5%
Gas = 3%
Farmer's = 2%

Comments

[krasota.livejournal.com]

you mean you don't give yarn it's own entirely separate category? ;)

our budget is similar... boy takes care of it, because my brain fog makes dangerous omissions when it comes to budgets and bills these days. he uses quicken and has an detailed itemized budget that works bi-weekly (he splits monthly bills in half). the extra (beyond bills, rent, utilities, other regular expenses) goes into three categories at the moment: me, groceries, household expenses. he doesn't have his own category *posted* right now because he's taking qi gong classes and has a gym membership. the three categories go on the fridge so i know how much i can spend.

i routinely ignore this, but i try to be circumspect in my spending. i typically go over the grocery budget every two weeks (so it comes out of household), but i still have a few dollars left in mine. he gets paid friday.

Re:

[kismet09.livejournal.com]

most of my fund goes to starbucks, yarn and books :)