Budgeting 101

kelshaws1311 · July 2015

What are your best tips for budgeting and STICKING to it 100%. My H and I are trying to pay down our debt in order to save for a down payment for a house. I feel like each time we get ahead something will knock us back and it is defeating. Currently we have $61,856.94 in debt between credit cards, student loans, and vehicles. I know we need to become aggressive with putting money towards the credit cards to get them paid off, I just keep getting that lost feeling. After budgeting we typically have anywhere from $500-$800 extra depending on what month it is to put towards the debt, and it doesn't seem to happen.

Any budgeting advice would be greatly appreciated.

formerlyGDaisy09 · July 2015

budget for what you actually need in each of the categories. budgeting for $200 for groceries is great, but impractical if that's an unobtainable goal.

account for everything...spend a month tracking every single dollar you spend.

post your budget, the people on this board are great at helping to identify areas you're spending too much and to make no-nonsense suggestions for where you can make changes.

simplyelise · July 2015

With your situation, I really strongly recommend Financial Peace University. It's so helpful for figuring out how to budget realistically and also frugally to maximize debt payoff.

As for us, we sit down together and draw up a budget for the month. We each try and think of every little thing we might need to spend money on (haircut for DH, money for baby gift for my cousin, extra gas to go visit parents, etc). When we first started, we looked back at our bank statements to figure out how much we spent on variable things.

It definitely takes a couple months of hard work before budgeting becomes routine. I think the key for us is not being very flexible. We straight up say no to ourselves or our friends if we don't have something in the budget. For unexpected car maintenance or doctor's visits, we try to find a place in the budget to take that from that is not debt. Maybe we'll put off a clothes need or we will skimp on groceries with a couple extra spaghetti nights.

The big key is tracking. You need to daily sit down and use whatever method you'd like (excel is what we started with) to subtract purchases from your budget and see what is remaining. If you'd like, sometimes people post their budgets and we can help point out things you are missing in your budget or things you could maybe cut out or reduce to maximize debt payoff.

brij2006 · July 2015

Another recommendation for Dave Ramseys', Financial Peace University.

Money is 90% behavior, 10% math. Sticking to the budget is the hard part, but the part that needs to be perfected. Also, each month the budget chances. They are not a one size fits all type of thing. You will want to sit down and figure out the next months' budget every time so you can add in the things you know are coming up. But if it wasn't put in the the original budget, then it doesn't get purchased. This rule was our saving grace many months.

kelshaws1311 · July 2015

Thank you very much for the suggestions. I already know our worst habit is eating out and it is so wasteful. My H and I talked on lunch and decided that to start out in August we are going to do a monthly budget and then each pay check (mine are every Friday, his are 15th and 30th/31st) sit down and budget exactly for that week. I believe this may be the key to helping us because seeing the money on a monthly scale is entirely different then if we sit down and say okay this is everything we need to get us through to next payday.

I am also looking into Financial Peace University.

simplyelise · July 2015

kelshaws1311 said:

Thank you very much for the suggestions. I already know our worst habit is eating out and it is so wasteful. My H and I talked on lunch and decided that to start out in August we are going to do a monthly budget and then each pay check (mine are every Friday, his are 15th and 30th/31st) sit down and budget exactly for that week. I believe this may be the key to helping us because seeing the money on a monthly scale is entirely different then if we sit down and say okay this is everything we need to get us through to next payday.
I am also looking into Financial Peace University.

Sounds like a good start!

Just for brainstorming, DH and I put $50 a month in our budget for a date night and that always includes eating out. Sometimes we go to cheap places to squeeze out two restaurant visits in a month. Any other eating out comes from out blow money. DH and I each get $60 cash at the start of the month and we both tend to use that on eating lunch out during work.

bcarb · July 2015

I like the idea of budgeting weekly--that is how we do it, monthly for us is too much to handle, it helps H gets paid weekly and I get paid Bi-Weekly. We also pay our monthly bills bi-weekly. And another thing I never used to do but H does is pay on our car loan weekly--it is amazing how much goes to principal each week. I do the same with his student loans.

brij2006 · July 2015

Our paychecks are very similar to yours. H gets paid weekly, and I get paid 2 times/month. We actually did a monthly budget, but then we break it down weekly. My paychecks pay the "set" bills like mortgage, student loans, utilities, etc. His pay for gas, groceries, weekly daycare expense, any eating out, church tithe, and clothing. His is also what we used to pay extra toward loans. So we would take his $500 check from that week and break down exactly what we needed to pay for out of that until his next paycheck. We would see where all we could cut that week, and do so accordingly. Anything extra went toward debt, and our goal was to make that number the highest possible. There were many weeks I would meal plan with what was in our cabinet and out of the garden, we would only fill up the cars once and make it work, and wouldn't eat out at all or go anywhere. It helped us to put as much as possible toward debt, but also be able to take it week by week and break it down a bit better. It also made it easier, because we could discuss at the beginning of the week, what all we needed to buy that week, and plan accordingly. So if we had a wedding that weekend, then we knew we needed $50 for a gift and would plan it out of that paycheck. Or try to cut somewhere else so we didn't need to use more than our normal spending in order to cover it.

CuriousKiddosMama · July 2015

For the most part we are Dave Ramsey followers. I use cash for most of our purchases. So I have a bunch of envelops and at the beginning of the month I go and get cash from the bank for the budgeted amounts. The big key to this is once it's gone, it's gone. If it's the final week of the month and I poorly managed our grocery budget and have $20 left, we get milk some fruits and veggies and eat out of the freezer/ pantry. (I have a huge pantry and separate freezer so please don't think I'm starving my family

We had a spreadsheet we were using to track everything but my husband was horrible about getting his receipts on so we purchased the app you need a budget and now we can enter everything into our phone so no purchases get missed from our budget.
And a big thing is agreement on the budget to begin with. We are seriously stockpiling $ right now for baby #2. I'm the worrier and so I want to make sure we have the cash on hand for all the dr bills, as well as for our increased expenses coming up this fall like speech therapy and partial day care for ds 1.

dragonstarjk · July 2015

There's a lot of good advice here. One little thing that helps me when I have extra money to spend and I need to be putting it towards debt or savings: before I spend it, I think of what I could use that for in the future.

Example--when we were saving for Hawaii, if I was going to go buy lunch or something, I would think to myself, this $15 that I'm going to spend on lunch could pay for one of our taxi trips in Hawaii. That's usually enough to motivate me to save instead of spend when the impulse arises.

Budgeting 101

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