Do you budget your money?

Gold Member Joined: Jun 20 2004 Posts: 1264

Do you have a budget which you stick to?
If you do what methods do you use?
Do you record every cent you spend? Do you just take out a certain amount of cash a week for groceries and basic weekly expenses?

Posted: Sun, May 18 2008, 11:26 pm Post subject:

We have a monthly budget for basic household items that we need. The money is put into an envelope and that's how we keep track of how much we used already, and what's left.

I usually don't record every penny (unless it's to prove that I'm not the one spending the money... Wink

)and there's always the credit card if I run out of cash.
We're not very strict with our budget, but we try to stick to it.
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Gold Member Joined: Jun 20 2004 Posts: 1264

I wanred to add another option - made a budget but hard to stick to. tried editing it but it didn't work

Platinum Member Joined: Sep 10 2006 Posts: 6566

I use an excel spreadsheet to keep track of what will be going where. I keep receipts for everything until I enter the data into the spreadsheet and the checkbook if applicable. I try to budget almost everything, and the budget changes every month.

Within the month, if I see my food budget dwindling but my clothing budget still pretty large, I might take from one for the other, but it has to equal out.

I also try to live on 3 weeks pay, and the rest goes to debt, then savings after that.
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Gold Member Joined: Mar 08 2008 Posts: 2200

We actually use Quicken to keep track of our budget. It is linked to our bank accountsWe also save all receipts until entered into Quicken, and there are no surprise bounced checks etc, when we are meticulous in this area.
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Posted: Mon, May 19 2008, 11:32 am Post subject:

Nope. There is no way. Theres always an expense or more comming up that we didnt expect.
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