Money Management & Budgeting

I like this idea a ton. I hate tracking money. I'm awful at it.
hahaha, I do too dude. I ask my wife every week...How much did I get paid? She replies with ______ and then follows it with, and I put this much _____ into savings. Thanks honey!
 
Check out mint.com

My wife and I are not spreadsheet type of people, this can actually track your spending through your checking account. Yes, its very secure. It is made by Intuit which owns quickbooks. It literally tracks your account and puts the things in categories for you. I think its free for basic help and understanding. It will help you get on your feet with budgeting rather quickly. The best part is...you dont have to fill in your own spread sheet.

Might have to try this for myself!
 
GG does this for both our home and our business and we are very serious about our future. Sacrifice now for the good of the future is never a bad thing.
 
also, our checking account is setup to take $1 from checking and put it to savings every time a transaction is posted on our account. When we were broke it really helped us out a ton. We were able to save money that quite frankly you dont miss. Next thing you know, you have a few grand in savings. We setup 2 savings accounts, a normal and our $1 account. That way our normal savings isnt tied with the one that gets $1 at a time. Makes it fun to see how many dollars you can get in that biatch

I did something similar with Bank of America's keep the change program. They round up my purchases and throw it into savings. I liked it more when they matched it but it basically paid for the outing for me
 
It is also going to be hard to budget with all of these great events THP keep coming up with.
 
GG does this for both our home and our business and we are very serious about our future. Sacrifice now for the good of the future is never a bad thing.
I agree, although my wife spends like she just got drafted number 1 overall pick
I did something similar with Bank of America's keep the change program. They round up my purchases and throw it into savings. I liked it more when they matched it but it basically paid for the outing for me
Thats who it was with, did they change it?
 
I've used Quicken, Mint and Excel. I don't use Quicken anymore just because my wife is mainly a cash person, which requires manual entry to keep track. I prefer to use a debit card for everything and rarely use cash. I also have a spreadsheet I created myself, which I've been using for over 10 years. It's quasi-budget, quasi-cashflow. Every December I add another year and tweak the formulas so that dates (every other Friday) and monthly payments are accurate. It has line items for every cc, loan, various insurances, utiility and whatever else I deem worthy of it's own line. When a line item is no longer used, I just hide that line. Deleting it would effect my formulas.

If anyone wants to take a look, send me a PM with your email.
 
I use Excel. All sorts of platitudes and cliches that can be thrown around; three legged stools etc a third on home, a third on life and a third on savings...but the essential step is the one you are taking. Take control!
 
I agree, although my wife spends like she just got drafted number 1 overall pick

Thats who it was with, did they change it?

They did a bit yeah. Stopped matching a couple years ago which sucked. I don't think Wachovia/Wells Fargo matches either. Quicker I forget it does it, usually the more money winds up in the savings acct
 
I finally got my wife on board with a budget this year, best move ever. The golf and Zulily packages don't come as often but we know we better love something to buy it.

One thing I haven't seen in here yet is taking advantage of your employers 401k matching plan if they offer it, you are just losing out on free money if you don't.
 
I finally got my wife on board with a budget this year, best move ever. The golf and Zulily packages don't come as often but we know we better love something to buy it.

One thing I haven't seen in here yet is taking advantage of your employers 401k matching plan if they offer it, you are just losing out on free money if you don't.
Definitely doing that. My company has a AMAZING retirement plan and it's mind bottling to see what it has grown to in just 1 year already. Good incentive to stick around I guess
 
One thing I haven't seen in here yet is taking advantage of your employers 401k matching plan if they offer it, you are just losing out on free money if you don't.

This. My employer matches your contributions up to 6%, which is thousands of dollars a year if you blank on it. Same goes for stock purchase plans - I enrolled in my company's this year. Have to be a bit more careful with this, obviously, but you're also turning down free money here if you don't participate, since most companies give you a discount off the purchase price of the stocks, but you can sell them at full price.

I should use something like Mint.com, but I've never really got round to setting it up. That said, I keep a close eye on my checking account, credit card, and student loan balances to make sure I am not spending too much and that I am making good progress in paying myself down to zero debt (stupid college...)
 
I finally got my wife on board with a budget this year, best move ever. The golf and Zulily packages don't come as often but we know we better love something to buy it.

One thing I haven't seen in here yet is taking advantage of your employers 401k matching plan if they offer it, you are just losing out on free money if you don't.


I would say do this almost all the time. However if you have credit card debt etc in which you are getting hit with interest each month, it may be more beneficial to pay those off first for it to really be "free money"
 
I would say do this almost all the time. However if you have credit card debt etc in which you are getting hit with interest each month, it may be more beneficial to pay those off first for it to really be "free money"

This. Retirement is important, but it's a heck of a lot easier with as little debt as possible
 
I don't budget and the wife and I each have our own accounts. She pays for her car and I have the rest (bill wise). I also have a set amount each month that goes directly into savings. The savings has been a lifesaver for us this years as I have not worked since early February with only my early retirement coming in each month for me, on top of the fact all the bills from my surgery were well over $100,000 at this point, which is of course the reason great insurance is a must.
 
There has been a ton of solid advice in here and I appreciate those who have sent excel sheets. Hopefully in a month or so I can help others now that I am understanding everything much better.
 
I am ATROCIOUS with this, which is a bit oxymoronic because I recruit and work with financial advisors. I used to have a spreadsheet and think I cried over how much I spent for a while, then went on the "don't look and I won't know any better" mentality, now I have some very large goals for the mid and long-term that I want to accomplish and need to know where my money is going. I PM'd Mike to get a copy of his spreadsheet and hope to straighten myself out in short order. Thank OP for bringing this up.
 
I use a spreadsheet for planning. Has budget categories, lets me record items as monthly, quarterly, or annual expenses. It totals them up as well as auto savings, 401k, etc...

It compares total spend to total income and shows me the nets to expect in a year.

I use quicken for actual tracking and bill paying.

One piece of advise, unless you are a super-detail oriented person that loves doing this sort of thing, don't make it hard. Dividing car registration into 12ths per month for instance and trying to set that amount aside each month starts to become a lot of work. You don't want to make it a burden and stop doing it. If your budget is that tight you should examine expenditures more closely and try to shift more into savings.

Congrats on the house and don't forget tax planning.,,and to vote against any politician that supports eliminating the mortgage deduction. :)
 
Sorry for the delay ive responded to all pm now
 
I use a spreadsheet I created on my own. Everyones personal situation, budget and flow of income will be different. You need to have goals that you are looking to achieve.

I work with a financial planner and financial advisor for my investments, but they both tend to agree that you should have about 20% of your annual income as savings. This is just in case. You should be contributing anywhere from 20-25% of your annual income towards your retirement, about 10-15% towards personal expenses, with the remainder going towards bills, loans, debt, and living expenses. This is just a base and will vary person to person based on what they want to do in the future.
 
I use a spreadsheet I created on my own. Everyones personal situation, budget and flow of income will be different. You need to have goals that you are looking to achieve.

I work with a financial planner and financial advisor for my investments, but they both tend to agree that you should have about 20% of your annual income as savings. This is just in case. You should be contributing anywhere from 20-25% of your annual income towards your retirement, about 10-15% towards personal expenses, with the remainder going towards bills, loans, debt, and living expenses. This is just a base and will vary person to person based on what they want to do in the future.

Question for clarification: Are you saying that 40-45% total should be saved/set for retirement then the 10-15% for expenses, leaving 40-50% for bills etc?
 
And Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Annisten should have been fighting over me instead of Brad Pitt...
 
Question for clarification: Are you saying that 40-45% total should be saved/set for retirement then the 10-15% for expenses, leaving 40-50% for bills etc?

Once you have 20% of your income saved in a savings account, then you'll start wanting to save towards your retirement and insuring your biggest asset, yourself. If you have a family, it's exponentially more important. So once you have that Savings established for safety, 20-25% towards retirement, 10-15% for personal, then the remainder is usually divvyed up among living expenses since this varies so greatly. The remaining living expense % would include any supplemental life insurace, disability policies for you family men. Just trying to give you an idea.

A lot of variability in here based on your future goals, so take it with a grain of salt. .
 
Once you have 20% of your income saved in a savings account, then you'll start wanting to save towards your retirement and insuring your biggest asset, yourself. If you have a family, it's exponentially more important. So once you have that Savings established for safety, 20-25% towards retirement, 10-15% for personal, then the remainder is usually divvyed up among living expenses since this varies so greatly. The remaining living expense % would include any supplemental life insurace, disability policies for you family men. Just trying to give you an idea.

A lot of variability in here based on your future goals, so take it with a grain of salt. .

Thats what I thought you meant I was just making sure. Most FPs say your house payment shouldnt be more than 33% of your annual income so I thought you were saying that bills shouldnt total more than about 15%!! Your saying setup the commonly referenced "Emergency Fund" first, then save for retirement!
 
Thats what I thought you meant I was just making sure. Most FPs say your house payment shouldnt be more than 33% of your annual income so I thought you were saying that bills shouldnt total more than about 15%!! Your saying setup the commonly referenced "Emergency Fund" first, then save for retirement!

Right on. Unless you have a lot of debt, and then you'll probably want to listen to Dave Ramsey over my random babbling.
 
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