I’ll come clean: While I’ve repeatedly suggested that everyone have and follow a budget, I’ve been lax in that department. While I could excuse myself because of the stress of providing for a growing household, that only provides me yet another reason to actually have a budget. That’s why I’ve decided to join in the 30-Day Budget Dare, as challenged by Glblguy from Gather Little by Little.
For the last five months, we have had no idea whether we were improving or damaging our finances. It seemed every time we saved on something, we ended up spending more somewhere else. Now that our “required” monthly expenses have settled down, it’s time to rebuild that budget.
In the past, we’ve used Quicken’s budgeting features, but always struggled to properly categorize each transaction (plus, it didn’t help with cash transactions). We also tried the original Pear Budget spreadsheet but couldn’t seem to click with it. We’ve even considered Mvelopes, but still we fell behind. So this time, we’re going to keep our budgeting method simple: Pencil and paper.
To get our “working” budget numbers, we’ll examine our last five months of expenses in Quicken and get a general idea of how much we spend in a handful of broad categories. Then we’ll match that up against our income and see where we can cut the budget to make it match (or, even better, end up with a surplus that we can save). Each day, we’ll take our receipts and write down where and how much we spent and update the running total for the month.
By keeping the method simple and offline, we can update it quickly and easily. If we’re out of town, we can either choose to take the sheet with us or write it down when we get back. My bet is that with a simpler system, we’ll be more likely to keep up.
Starting May 1, we will officially be living with a budget. That gives me a week to put together the initial data and start adjusting myself to the budget. Before then, I’ll share our system and our budget and I hope you’ll share yours, too. Let’s enter this challenge together and see how well we do!
If you have a budget plan already or know of a good way to set up a budget, please share it in the comments!
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I’m in. I keep a budget, but I can never seem to keep up with it and really make it work. I get discouraged too. I will do the challenge with you.
Awesome! Thanks for joining in, writing about it and for helping to promote it!
I use a spreadsheet for mine. I check my online banking against the budget and keep track of the total there – I spend very little cash, and mostly use my debit card. I recommend making it a part of your everyday routine, otherwise it is easy to fall behind on it.
We’re in. We track our expenses but don’t really have a budget. We’ll start May 1st as well.
I’m in as well. after not doing a budget for a few months with tons of bad excuses, we’re back at it. scary how you can get so off track when you haven’t been doing it for a while.