Comments on: A Work-in-Progress

By: Megan

Megan — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:39:58 +0000

I have just gotten serious about budgetting and tracking our money. When I was single I always would forecast my expenses for the upcoming paycheque and then decide what to do with the leftovers, like savings, etc. Now that my fiance and I are living together I found that we were spending money like there was no tomorrow! We moved into a house that needed extensive renovations back in December and we had certain amount of money for those reno’s. So dropping $800 here and $400 there was not big deal but once the reno’s were done and the reno money was gone we were still in that mode. So we’ve been on the jars for two months and it definately is helping keep us in check. I need to get better at tracking our money spending and forecasting expenses. One thing I have always done is paying myself first by having savings and rsp’s come out my account the day I get paid.
Currently I have three budgets I hade made up:
1. Budget while planning wedding (current)
2. Budget after wedding and honeymoon
3. Budget for when a baby comes.

I think our budget and tracking of our money will always be a work in progress. But I am fine with that. I enjoy it.
I think my budget will alway be a work in progress.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:49:40 +0000

I’ve created a spreadsheet from about 5 different budget spreadsheets, I’ve got my jar amts inputed, and track my expenses daily. I’ve set it up to show where I’m standing for the month, how much I’ve saved(not saved) MTD, and where I’m headed for the month(forecasted). It allows me to see VERY quickly if I’m heading in a bad direction. It also shows daily averages for each category as wel. For each category I have a box, if everything is on on target it’s GREEN if it’s not it goes RED. Icompare month to month to see how I’m doing. I also track my bank account balances every month to see if they’re going up or down. This acts as another safety net.

By: *pol

*pol — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:15:35 +0000

It hurts to admit it since I work on computers all day…. I can’t seem to build a spreadsheet to save my life! And the one I downloaded off Gail’s site has a bunch of broken formulas when I try to use it (maybe my Excel is too old?). I really prefer pen, paper and 4 different coloured highlighters! I take my bank statements and highlight fixed expenses (with a star beside the irregular ones) in one colour and then a different colour for ALL food and consumable household related expenses, and another colour for transportation and the last colour for entertainment/clothing/gifts. From there it is easier to break them down to more specific categories if need be. By having these sweeping generalizations for categories, I am way more likely to keep it honest and panic adequately if something isn’t working. But the important thing is to make sure the deposits and the withdraws balance out. If they don’t the tweaking happens. It may be a bit reactive, but it works for us because we have a few thousand dollar “buffer zone” in our checking account. When a month is expensive, it is balanced next month….. I am self employed too so the buffer (or float) is a natural thing to us…. and so are unusual months (heck, every month is unusual!).

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:41:13 +0000

The Excel spreadsheet is a many splendored thing.

I freelance so I already keep strict records of income and outgo that way. I recently decided to track my personal spending again when work started to slow down. All I did was add a new page/tab to the work-related spreadsheet file and now I have one file I open up for all of my bookkeeping be it personal or professional.

If you carry a cell or PDA with you and you don’t get a receipt for a purchase, I suggest having a place in your device where you can list those random little expenses that you will otherwise forget about and then consult it every few days and input the totals into your spreadsheet. I rarely have a pencil on me but I almost always have my phone on me.

By: Catherine

Catherine — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:49:41 +0000

I’ve been using account books for keeping track of our $$ for 40 years – learned to do that from my Mom who did it all her married life. It’s kind of fun to look back into the olden days and see how much things cost.
However, I didn’t start ‘budgeting’ until Nov. 1/08 when I found Gail. I saved receipts for several months and then used her budget to calculate our expenses. I use my own version of the jars and take $240. out of our account for the week for variable expenses. My categories are groceries, transportation, clothing and gifts, other and my health food store. There are only the two of us so I have money left at the end of the week…unless the kids come home and more goes to groceries, or like today when I bought a second hand wooden sleigh for our grandson for $22. It all comes out of that $$. The fixed expense $$ is in our account and bills are paid when due. That means there is nothing owing on credit cards at the end of the month as well.

By: Marie

Marie — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:22:44 +0000

My recommendation for better budgeting is to write have a spreadsheet with each month of the calendar written at the top. Then I write down all the events that happen during that month. This helps me avoid surprises I should have known about. If I forget something, I write it at the bottom and I am ready for the following year.

Examples of irregular expenses (non-monthly)

Transportation: oil change, plates, driver’s license, insurance
Pets: vet fees, toys
After-work activities
Clothing
Gifts (list every birthday and event)
Outings (list events, including holiday socials)
Food (list expected gatherings)
Landscaping
Association fees
Travel
Tuition and books

By: winkwink

winkwink — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:21:23 +0000

Guilty as charged.

There is work to be done in my financial life right now! This year I somehow managed to track my spending for a few months, and budget for a few months, but never both at the same time.

By: WM

WM — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:07:38 +0000

I’ve been tracking my spending since I was a teenager and to be honest – I really enjoy it. My only trick is to try to put everything on plastic (and obviously never carry a balance) so that I can look at my debit and credit card statements at the end of the month and get the full picture.

I plug everythign into a handy spreadsheet that has one tab for monthly income statements and another tab for a monthly net worth calculation. When you can see your assets growing each month, who wouldn’t think this was a little fun?

I guess I have a second more technical tip – if you have a charge on your statment that you can’t identify (IE the retailer is unclear) try putting the info given into google. 9 times out of 10 this helps me figure out who the retailer was and remember the charge.

By: cassie

cassie — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:10:30 +0000

My husband and I have been tracking our spending for about 2 years now. It is indeed tedious, but is so very worth it. I need to do it to keep myself honest!

I find that when I explain to people how I save money and track expenses, they are always curious as to why I would do so much work (talking about tracking every dollar). No one seems to understand that it is the only way you can truely see how much you are spending in certain categories and even on certain items.

Some people are just doomed to never get it, I guess.

By: jay

jay — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:52:29 +0000

I don’t budget closely, but I budget VERY completely. For me, the important thing is to have EVERYTHING in broad categories. Most categories don’t change much on a monthly basis (mortgage, utilities), so as long as I’m not seeing changes in those categories, they don’t get much attention, as they’ve been scrutinized closely in the past.

The only things I find that I need to track closely to follow the budget is Food (grocery purchases only) and Fun (any discretionary spending at all – dining, cash withdrawls, clothes, gifts).

The important thing is to let unused “Fun” money build up over time, so that you have a fund that you can use for ‘big ticket items’ and don’t feel it necessary to actually spend it every month.

After a while, I got used to having about $1000 built up in the Fun pool ($200 gets allocated per month, but most gets used… that’s not a lot, one dinner out might cost $25!) – it means that when you see something that you absolutely MUST have, but it’s expensive, you have the money available for it. It won’t affect your budget at all! However, you’ll still consider it carefully, because you’re depleting your hard-won Fun cache.

Also, I reward myself with any extra earnings beyond my budgeted earnings by sticking a quarter of it into the Fun cache.

But yes, I do adjust the budget any time something changes. I have the Starting Renting Budget, the Bought a House budget, the Bought a Car Budget, the Got a Raise budget.

Oh, and future budgets too: Paid Off the House Budget, Retirement Budget… Retirement, at least, is FAR in the future, but I think it’s important enough to start thinking about it!

By: Melanie

Melanie — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:31:23 +0000

I made a spreadsheet and it has totals for the month as well as the year to date. That way if one month I am over on clothes shopping for example I can make sure that for the year I am ok. Anything left over at the end of the month goes to savings for the months when I actually use the amounts designated for things like travel.

By: Rita

Rita — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:31:10 +0000

I made up a spreadsheet and used it for many years, then I bought an accounting program which I’ve now used for about 15 years. I put nearly everything on my credit card (which I pay off every month) so it’s really easy to enter items. I rarely use the debit card or cash and if I do I get receipts. I update my program each week if not sooner.

By: Risa

Risa — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:21:07 +0000

I do our finances once a week, and it takes maybe 10 minutes to stay on track. We have a basket in the kitchen that hubby and I throw our receipts into each day (we’ll handwrite on a scrap of paper for anything we forgot to get a receipt for). Once a week, I take that basket and enter the receipts into both a pen-and-paper notebook (which gives us a running total of what we have spent in each Gail jar category), as well as into a spreadsheet (which is set up to add columns (Gail jars) so I can see at a glance how much in total we have spent in each category, as well as the overall total for the month). At the same time I check our bank accounts online, move any money from our savings account to our checking account to cover upcoming bills, pay any bills that have come in in the past week, and file the papers away (hubby is self-employed so we need to keep these for tax purposes). Total time is maybe 10 minutes, and we always know how much we are spending, how much we have left in the budget, and whether or not any weird activities have happened in our accounts (or not happened–e.g., cheques not yet been cashed). And since when I check our account online I look back at the previous month’s transactions to determine the total I need to move to cover bills and automatic payments, I also can see if any bills have gone missing (i.e., oh, I usually pay the Mastercard bill at this time, but I haven’t got it in the mail yet. I’d better call and see what’s up.)

Like I said, this system works well for us and takes about 10 minutes per week. The only other things I do is once every 3 months (when we get our RSP mutual fund statements) I do a net worth calculation. At the same time, I transfer the info from the last 3 months of tracking expenses, use excel to get averages as to what was spent in the different Gail jars, and compare to what we budgeted. I then revise the budget accordingly going forward. Doing both these ‘big picture’ financial things takes less than 30 minutes, 4 times per year.

It really isn’t difficult or time-consuming to stay on top of your finances once your find a system that works well for you.

By: Girl Makes Cents

Girl Makes Cents — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:59:44 +0000

Tracking my spending is new to me. But what I have been doing so far (since September), is keeping my receipts and then writing them down on an electronic sticky note. I just keep a calculator by my computer and input it everytime I spend something. It’s easy since the “sticky note” is on my homepage. I also have the budgeted amount for each section in brackets beside so I know how much I have left…or how much I am over. It’s what works for now. I think later I may move to jars, or tracking with excel. Jars is a bit too difficult right now, I like the convenience of using credit and debit. But keeping track is key!

By: Christy

Christy — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:53:58 +0000

Thank you.. I needed this blog as I have a tendancy to set things in stone and then just get frustrated when the stone is too heavy.

As my husband is not a computer guy I think the best tip that I will try is the Monthly binder with a record sheet for each category and the reciepts going into the plastic folders.

I will set a yearly target for each catergory expense and then every month I’ll set the budget for the month. This way I have a glance at the years goals and can be more realistic about the month to month expenses.

As I just blew our $200 misc budget on Saturday past when I spent $235 on gymnastic fees. When I do that I just feel like giving up and saying it doesn’t work… what doesn’t work is how I “work” the system. I was quite pleased though when my grocery total came too $199.96 and my grocery budget is $200. .

Thank you I needed this blog!