I'm still getting store and sale emails in my inbox. The process of de-tempting myself is difficult, but I know I can stick to it! Every time I get one, I just hit "unsubscribe"!
To help us begin making a budget, I decided to look into what our online bank offers. We have USAA, and they have some budget tracking tools. They already have our financial information, so it should be an easy step for me to use their tools. I'm going to try using their tools for this week and see if it will work for us.
Their tool is called "Money Manager" and it puts your expenses into a spreadsheet and a pie chart. The expenses just have to be categorized properly. I'm working right now to get everything categorized properly. It will lump all of our grocery visits into one line item, gas station visits, regular bills, etc. I'm going to start here for our family budget so that I can begin to get a picture of what we have been spending and where.
If you don't have USAA or your bank doesn't have an online money manager, here are some other websites that were recommended by other readers.
Mint (www.mint.com) looked pretty good, the main website says, "the best free way to manage your money". What they do is pull all of your account information from various accounts and gather it into one spot. They can even send you text messages or emails to let you know how you are doing. This is called "online account aggregation".
Another online account aggregation resource is www.yodlee.com Yodlee Money Center. They have a program that is connected with H&R Block. If you use H&R Block for taxes and money management already, it will probably be an easier conversion.
Both of those website can make a pie chart for you to visually show you where your money is going.
Another person recommended Evernote www.evernote.com It looks like a scrapbook for the internet, and anything you do online. You can also take photos of receipts or things in the real world. Evernote calls itself "your personal digital assistant". Again, its another place to consolidate all information.
Prior to using online sources for money tracking, our family used a computer spreadsheet (Open Office - Calc or Excel) or a hand written one. I found a bunch of sample ones at this website: 10 Free Household Budget Spreadsheets There are ones for each month and ones for paying down debt, one for planning a wedding, one for a years worth of budgets to track month to month spending.
The basics of budgeting are this:
1. Find out how much you make. Make that a line item. If you have a fixed income source (salary, usual wage) and a variable income source (part time job with variable hours, babysitting, etc) then make those two seperate line items.
2. Then find out what your usual some-what fixes expenses are and have a line item for each - mortgage/rent, insurance, internet, cell phone,
3. Then average your usual some-what variable expenses are - for us that is our water bill, we pay it every 3 months, so the month we pay it we need to budget differently. Other bills like this are electricity and car gas and heating gas which vary by month. We use lots of heating gas in the winter because that's what heats our house, and we use lots of electricity in the summer because that's what runs our air conditioner. We also use less of either in months we travel, and less of both in the spring and fall when the weather is nicer. But we still need to budget for them.
4. Then budget for goals like savings, debt repayment (beyond minimum payments) and charitable contributions.
5. Anything you have "left over" then goes to essential variable things like groceries, date nights, clothes, and other things that we have preferences for which vary our spending.
This last line item is the line item that I'm aiming to change this year for our household. You may have different goals and that's okay. We can continue to support each other in spending less, and getting our finances in order no matter what our goals are!
My goal this week is to figure out what we spend where and see what our#4 and #5 line item leaves us. I really want to prioritize that #4 line item for savings, debt repayment and charitable giving, so we will have to cut back on #5 for 2012.
To help us begin making a budget, I decided to look into what our online bank offers. We have USAA, and they have some budget tracking tools. They already have our financial information, so it should be an easy step for me to use their tools. I'm going to try using their tools for this week and see if it will work for us.
Their tool is called "Money Manager" and it puts your expenses into a spreadsheet and a pie chart. The expenses just have to be categorized properly. I'm working right now to get everything categorized properly. It will lump all of our grocery visits into one line item, gas station visits, regular bills, etc. I'm going to start here for our family budget so that I can begin to get a picture of what we have been spending and where.
If you don't have USAA or your bank doesn't have an online money manager, here are some other websites that were recommended by other readers.
Mint (www.mint.com) looked pretty good, the main website says, "the best free way to manage your money". What they do is pull all of your account information from various accounts and gather it into one spot. They can even send you text messages or emails to let you know how you are doing. This is called "online account aggregation". Another online account aggregation resource is www.yodlee.com Yodlee Money Center. They have a program that is connected with H&R Block. If you use H&R Block for taxes and money management already, it will probably be an easier conversion.
Both of those website can make a pie chart for you to visually show you where your money is going.
Another person recommended Evernote www.evernote.com It looks like a scrapbook for the internet, and anything you do online. You can also take photos of receipts or things in the real world. Evernote calls itself "your personal digital assistant". Again, its another place to consolidate all information.
Prior to using online sources for money tracking, our family used a computer spreadsheet (Open Office - Calc or Excel) or a hand written one. I found a bunch of sample ones at this website: 10 Free Household Budget Spreadsheets There are ones for each month and ones for paying down debt, one for planning a wedding, one for a years worth of budgets to track month to month spending.
1. Find out how much you make. Make that a line item. If you have a fixed income source (salary, usual wage) and a variable income source (part time job with variable hours, babysitting, etc) then make those two seperate line items.
2. Then find out what your usual some-what fixes expenses are and have a line item for each - mortgage/rent, insurance, internet, cell phone,
3. Then average your usual some-what variable expenses are - for us that is our water bill, we pay it every 3 months, so the month we pay it we need to budget differently. Other bills like this are electricity and car gas and heating gas which vary by month. We use lots of heating gas in the winter because that's what heats our house, and we use lots of electricity in the summer because that's what runs our air conditioner. We also use less of either in months we travel, and less of both in the spring and fall when the weather is nicer. But we still need to budget for them.
4. Then budget for goals like savings, debt repayment (beyond minimum payments) and charitable contributions.
5. Anything you have "left over" then goes to essential variable things like groceries, date nights, clothes, and other things that we have preferences for which vary our spending.
This last line item is the line item that I'm aiming to change this year for our household. You may have different goals and that's okay. We can continue to support each other in spending less, and getting our finances in order no matter what our goals are!
My goal this week is to figure out what we spend where and see what our#4 and #5 line item leaves us. I really want to prioritize that #4 line item for savings, debt repayment and charitable giving, so we will have to cut back on #5 for 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment