October 2010 Weddings
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
How do you budget your money? (savings? debt?)
Last month Scot and I have just set up a giant budget for the next year, so that we will be credit-card debt free by the end of the year. (2 months in and we're still on track!)
We've been using a combination of Mint.com to monitor our spending habits, and also a Budget Calendar http://www.mishell.ca/ that is really a big excel document with the facade of an actual calendar. (we found that this visualization of our budget through time has really helped us).
So, whether your have debt or are trying to save, how do you and your spouse budget money? Have an accountant? Simple spreadsheets? Programs? Books?
Re: How do you budget your money? (savings? debt?)
We have an Excel spreadsheet that I created and we tweaked together...but I actually just signed up on mint.com yesterday, so we're slowly going to try to transition to that.
Even though we have a decent budget, I don't think it's really strict/detailed enough and that we still waste a decent amount of money.
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When we first purchased our home we kept a dry-erase calendar with all of our sticky bills as well as any moving bills (wedding stuff, house stuff, whatever) to have a clear picture of our in/out that month. We did this for about a year.
Flame away if you must. Right now, we don't track anything. Our sticky bills are so routine we don't need the calendar and with the wedding off our radar, there's no large expenses to watch out for.. so .. we just live. We both have retirement plans that we auto-save to, we have a portion of our checks auto-saving to our bank savings account.. so.. that's it.
First of all, it's notable that DH and I are both 30 and pretty well established in our careers (and corresponding salaries). The only debt we have is the mortgage on his condo (neither of us has any student loans, car loans <paid them both off last year>, or credit card debt).
We both max out our 401k; of our remaining income we each put $250 a paycheck into our own discretionary account (for gifts, splurges, etc. that don't come out of joint). Everything else goes to our joint account. We transfer anything that isn't needed after mortgage and credit card has been paid to our online savings account (where it's a bit difficult to access, so you're less likely to transfer it back).
We're both using Mint.com; I liked their budgeting tool, just to keep an eye on expenditures (especially around the wedding, as we were paying for it ourselves). There's a lot to be said for knowing exactly how much you're spending in different categories. I liked the warning feature it had to tell you that you're approaching your pre-set limit. DH uses Quicken for monitoring our accounts, as he loves the trend-lines and seeing net worth, etc.
est. 10/10/10
Well, Im an accountant so Im a spreadsheet nut LOL...We do things a bit unconventionally i think...We have a joint account for house bills and a joint house savings account (for those projects we want to do eventually). We also have our own seperate accounts for personal purchases (birthday christmas valentines day, etc)...so a set amount is put into each account monthly (or biweekly). He's a consultant so he does not get paychecks every week like most people...So as long as the house account has enough in it for 3 months (being a consultant we have to plan ahead incase there isnt any work for a few weeks), the rest goes into the house savings account.
This was the best plan for us because we were both so independent. We had both owned our own homes for several years. This way no one was "taking control" of the finances and we can still have our own spend money if we see something we want to buy.