My wife and I both have decent jobs, and we are doing ok financially. However, I think we could be doing a lot better if we had a better handle on exactly where our money is going every month, especially since we have an 8-month-old son now and all of the expenses that go along with parenthood.
So, my question is what would you suggest for a good way to set up and manage a household budget? MS Money? Some other software package? Pencil, paper and sheer willpower?
Thank you for any and all suggestions.
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Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover.
He has a sheet in that book that tells you how to do a $0 dollar budget, which means you take your total income for a month and "spend" every last dollar of it. By spending it, I mean allocating it to certain things such as:
Food
Gas
Utilities
Mortage/Rent
Slush
Entertainment
Car Payment
Credit Cards
Phone
Cable
and whatever else you can think of.
I know you're not asking about debt but I was $35k in debt and the budget helped us clear it out in a year and a half, which is an accomplishment because my wife home schools and doesn't work(well, the home schooling is TOTALLY work) and I am a lowly E-6 in the military.
The book also has some great info on how to get out of debt. And the author(he also has his own radio show) comes straight from the hip and it's not hard to understand. Changed my view on car payments and credit cards.
I can't speak on MS Money as we just created an Excel spreadsheet (which I can send you a copy of of you'd like) but I am sure there are programs that have a budget feature in them. They would almost HAVE to, wouldn't they? You can't really manage your money unless you have a budget.
Good luck either way and congrats!! on the baby boy!
http://quicken.intuit.com/
I also heard about GNUCash, which is free.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCash
http://xpenser.com/
All it does is allow you to record your spending. I didn't want to trust some start up website with my banking accounts, so this was perfect. You can send it a text message from your table at burger king, and it will save the expense you sent to your list. No more keeping receipts. You can record it online, by phone call, IM, text, or twitter. I tried doing the pen and paper, but I kept forgetting the paper or loosing receipts.
They're based out of Mountain View and track basically everything you have. Including my Fidelity investments. Pretty nifty little site.
Even categorizes your purchases based upon where they were groceries, bills, etc, and allows for custom titles. Has transaction history, spending trends, custom budget levels with text messages when you go over it, etc.
Lots of security, Verisign, all that jazz.
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: FREE.
Edit: I'm an idiot and didn't notice that Enos had posted it. But it's still coool.
I used Mint.com. It's easy to use, but there is always that fear when having all your bank account info and whatever in one place online. BUT...it's very good for budgeting practice.
This.
Wife and I started his program, cleared out about 30k in debt as well in under 2 years right when we got married. Couldn't imagine doing it any other way.
2008, 2012, 2014 D&D "Rare With No Sauce" League Fantasy Football Champion!
Congrats!
I was skeptical at first when my wife handed it to me and said "before we get married we need to be on the same page about money. One of the top reasons for divorce is finances. This is where I stand."
I thought it was a get rich quick or some infomercial thing but I couldn't say no to the request. The guy is legit and the whole book made sense. Glad my wife is so smart (about some things! ) cause it's definitely helped us and helped our money.
Being able to track your expenditures is great and it will hopefully help in not having to "follow" your money and where it's going but Dave will teach you how to make your money do what, and go where, you want it to.
I've gone through the classes as well, and while there's a lot of good advice in it, there's also a lot of dangerous bullshit as well.
Also if you have a blackberry you can drop the spreadsheet template in there to add your expenses on the go.
For me though I had to do a year of tracking my expenses to analyze my patterns of expenses, by the following year I cut my wasteful spending by 10k and opened CD account (which atm interest sucks).
Good luck always set a day to do all your inputting.
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
I'll start a spreadsheet today.
yep, there's some philosophies of his I don't agree with. It's unrealistic to buy a home with straight cash, homey and never use credit in any capacity. However everything else I think falls in line with good personal fiscal policies.
2008, 2012, 2014 D&D "Rare With No Sauce" League Fantasy Football Champion!
It's nice to setup all yoru automated bills and such and see how much cash you'll have after X months or whatever.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/templates/results.aspx?qu=monthly+budget&av=TPL000
(If that breaks, use this link and just search "Monthly budget")
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
I will second this, and will add that you make sure to include that $1.49 Mt. Dew you bought at the convenience store and the $0.50 doughnut you got at the gas station when logging your spending habits.
There will come a point at which you can stop tracking those little incidental cash purchases, but until you get a sense of just how much cash you spend each much on the tiniest of expenses, you will have a difficult time budgeting your money properly.
http://www.yarlan.com/PABUDGET.xls
I like to point out that taking his advice on using credit is like asking a reformed alcoholic about how to drink responsibly. But what I find more damaging is his willingness to blame the financial problems of Americans on character flaws while ignoring that most Americans have been losing ground financially for the past couple of decades. He's started to change his tune these days, but I think that's mainly because even he can see that the societal tide be a-changing.
Again, he makes good points, but just be aware that there's some dangerous concepts in there with them.
And yeah, the best program I've found for dealing with budgeting is Excel/Calc (OpenOffice's Excel).
I just downloaded this template, but do you know how to totally reset it to nothing so I can start from scratch?
I also stick to this rule: if I need to charge it, I can't afford it. Credit cards are for convenience, not short-term loans (which inevitably turn into long-term loans at usurious rates).