I used to hate the word “budget”. I thought it meant I could never spend any money or buy anything. Not that I need to spend a lot of money, but what if I'm at Target and that cute frame I've been loving is put on sale for $4.99, then what? If I'm on a budget that means I can never get it b/c frames aren't in the budget.
Wrong.
I now love being on a budget. We have been doing a cash budget for a while now and it is so good for us. So good! We take out cash each month for ALL of our expenses except bills like utilities and such. When I say everything I mean everything. Yes ladies that means I have to walk into the gas station to give them my $40 for gas instead of paying at the pump. Yes when I am at Target and have groceries and household and kids clothes I do 3 different transactions. Kinda a pain, but so worth it.
This way at the end of the month we're not trying to figure out how we'll pay our gas bill b/c we have already pulled out all the cash we'll need and the rest is for bills. This not only keeps us on track with our spending, it helps prevent overspending, it helps promote saving and it keeps us accountable for what we spend. No longer am I able to go walk around Target and spend $100 on clearance items just because I'm bored. There is no folder for that in our budget!
I have this cheesy little acordian file folder that I keep in my purse and that holds all of our cash. I take it everywhere with me. Dorky I know, but it's how we Ivey's roll! This way no matter where we are we have our cash. Now I'll be the first to admit that sometimes towards the end of our 2 weeks I'm pulling money out of gas to cover dining or vise versa. It all works out in the end though b/c when a folder is empty it's empty!
So, how do you and your family stay on budget? Share your pointers with us! If you've never tried a cash budget I'll be the first to tell you that it is HARD to start. It took us many times of trying before we truly were faithful to it and allowed it to work for us. Now we love it and I can't imagine not doing it. This past month with the move and packing and all that we abused it and didn't pull the cash out each month and it was more stressful. We were both spending money and not keeping track and let's just say we sucked at our budget. Now we're back and the budget is kicking!
How do you budget?
We are on a cash budget too; however, we need to get MORE disciplined with it. (We had to go cash when Gabe lost his job 4 years ago and it took 6-9 months to find a new job!!)I pull our cash out each week and put it into envelopes that I have in our checkbook. We still struggle with IMPULSIVE buying, but not as much as we used to. When we DON’T stay on track our end of the month can be really hard. Our biggest struggle is with eating out even after we have spent the envelope. <> My thought is progress, is better than staying in the insanity cycle of not making progress!!
I’m not nearly as diligent as I should be but I use mint.com to track our budget. Lots of people have recommended the cash method but it just is not for us. I check our online accounts daily so I always have an idea of what is going on. I just tell me husband, “No more eating out this month” or something like that and it works for us. We also have my husband’s paycheck deposited directly to savings and I transfer a portion of it to checking. This sort of happened on accident but now I like the way it works because money goes automatically into savings without having to think much about it. I wish we were better at saving for specific items like a new car for when one of ours goes…something to work on, I guess.
We use cash too and love it. I used to carry around a horrible plastic thing for all of our envelopes, but then I found this on amazon – a moleskin with folders. So much better!
http://www.amazon.com/Moleskine-Pocket-Memo-Accordion-Folder/dp/B002622OPE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=office-products&qid=1276619488&sr=8-2-spell
there are cute ones on etsy too:
http://www.etsy.com/search_results.php?search_query=budget+envelopes&search_type=all&ref=auto
Sounds like Dave Ramsey wisdom to me! I have a cheesy cash accordian too, and I get lots of strange stares. But I DO have more of a peace at the end of the month and I feel in control of the $$ instead of the other way around. I’m still not perfect…sometimes the debit card comes out, but we are really trying not to! Thanks for sharing your budet victory!
I love Mint, too! But I’m thinking about doing some cash envelopes now…
i love the cash system. i used it for most of my stuff. i also manage the rest of my budget with mint.com. and I LOVE IT!! it downloads your bank statements, categorizes them in your budget and will send you notifications if you are near or exceed your budget. and you are are right, a budget has been so freeing!!
I have tried the cash method, but since Sarah and I got married we have just always paid ourselves first. We have money allocated from our paychecks to go into Short Term Savings, Long Term Savings, Student Loans, and Mortgage Payment. And, we ALWAYS pay our credit card off at the end of the month. We are pretty lucky though, in that we are dual income with no kids. Plus the Army pays for many things like Housing (allthough we own and pay on a property back in Texas), electricity, water and trash.
Still we live pretty modestly. We only allow about 1/4 of each paycheck to go to day-to-day expenses, like cell phones, groceries, eating out, clothing, etc.
Putting money into our Long Term Savings first really has treated us well. We know that the money in there is “untouchable” so once it’s there its completely gone to us. (Until we need it for something awesome, like a house down payment or something of that sort) It also acts as our emergency fund. You know, when all else fails and we have no jobs and no money it can get us by for a while.
We budget, and are working on baby step 2 of the Dave Ramsey plan-however, we have not gotten the cash budget thing down! We use our debit card, but definitely need to make the switch over to cash.
The months we don’t do the cash budget are so stressful, it makes it easy to stay on one when you get used to it and see the alternative. The only thing we don’t pull is bills and gas that way I don’t have to get makenzie out of the car everytime I fill up. But I even pay the dr. With cash, which is a huge chunk of money right now as I make payments at the ob. It can be funny when you pull out a wad of cash and start counting, and then I pull out the change. People are surprised usually cause so few people use cash.