You guys, I'm so glad that you are as dorkily excited by personal finance as I am. It's nice to have company and I loved reading your thoughts on spending.
Once I knew how I wanted to spend my expendable income, I had to figure out how to stick to a budget. I've always had a generalized budget, but I've never really tracked my spending. My necessary expenses are all paid automatically. My contribution to our joint account (which pays for rent, utilities, groceries, car insurance and any fun stuff we do together), my student loan payments (which I will be paying for a very long time), my savings, our joint savings, and my retirement contributions all get pulled out immediately after I get paid, so I never have to worry about overspending and not being able to meet my obligations. But whatever was leftover was just mine to play with and I'd like to step it up a bit this year, especially with the wedding coming up.
Soooo .... I'm giving myself an annual allowance this year. I always get frustrated with monthly budgets because my spending fluctuates a lot. I'm hoping that seeing a lump sum sitting there (and diminishing, over the course of the year) will help motivate me to keep my spending in check. The annual allowance is just for money that I spend on fun things (shopping, drinking, buying overpriced cookies, etc). As I mentioned, most of my big expenses come out of our joint account and D and I have a separate budget for that.
Also brand new this year - I created a line item for hair cuts. I am cheap and I hate paying to get my hair cut. But I also feel significantly better with a decent cut. Dilemma. So I calculated out how much it will cost me to get my hair cut every 8 weeks (my stylist will do a free bang trim whenever I want, which is every 3 - 4 weeks), added it up, gasped a little and then put it into my budget. That money doesn't come out of my allowance, so I won't be tempted to stop going.
I created a super simple spreadsheet so I can have a brief overview of how I'm doing throughout the year. Each month I'll enter my credit card bill + miscellaneous expenses. I put almost everything on my credit card (points!) so the miscellaneous is usually cash that I've taken out for splitting bar tabs.
You can see the spreadsheet here. Feel free to save a copy to your computer if you'd like - I'm not guaranteeing that it will be the most mind blowing financial tool invented, because I'm using it for the first time. You can make your yearly allowance anything you want. If you change the number in that cell, the others will adjust for you. As you input your monthly expenses, you'll see a running tally of how much money you have left for the year.
I'll keep you guys updated on how it works. I went back and checked my spending from last year and the allowance I've given myself is much, much lower than what I've been spending. The sensible thing would have been to up it a bit, but instead I'm soldiering on. I'll adjust if I need to, but I'm hoping I can stay in the ballpark.
Questions? Ask in the comments and I'll answer as best I can.
Once I knew how I wanted to spend my expendable income, I had to figure out how to stick to a budget. I've always had a generalized budget, but I've never really tracked my spending. My necessary expenses are all paid automatically. My contribution to our joint account (which pays for rent, utilities, groceries, car insurance and any fun stuff we do together), my student loan payments (which I will be paying for a very long time), my savings, our joint savings, and my retirement contributions all get pulled out immediately after I get paid, so I never have to worry about overspending and not being able to meet my obligations. But whatever was leftover was just mine to play with and I'd like to step it up a bit this year, especially with the wedding coming up.
Soooo .... I'm giving myself an annual allowance this year. I always get frustrated with monthly budgets because my spending fluctuates a lot. I'm hoping that seeing a lump sum sitting there (and diminishing, over the course of the year) will help motivate me to keep my spending in check. The annual allowance is just for money that I spend on fun things (shopping, drinking, buying overpriced cookies, etc). As I mentioned, most of my big expenses come out of our joint account and D and I have a separate budget for that.
Also brand new this year - I created a line item for hair cuts. I am cheap and I hate paying to get my hair cut. But I also feel significantly better with a decent cut. Dilemma. So I calculated out how much it will cost me to get my hair cut every 8 weeks (my stylist will do a free bang trim whenever I want, which is every 3 - 4 weeks), added it up, gasped a little and then put it into my budget. That money doesn't come out of my allowance, so I won't be tempted to stop going.
I created a super simple spreadsheet so I can have a brief overview of how I'm doing throughout the year. Each month I'll enter my credit card bill + miscellaneous expenses. I put almost everything on my credit card (points!) so the miscellaneous is usually cash that I've taken out for splitting bar tabs.
You can see the spreadsheet here. Feel free to save a copy to your computer if you'd like - I'm not guaranteeing that it will be the most mind blowing financial tool invented, because I'm using it for the first time. You can make your yearly allowance anything you want. If you change the number in that cell, the others will adjust for you. As you input your monthly expenses, you'll see a running tally of how much money you have left for the year.
I'll keep you guys updated on how it works. I went back and checked my spending from last year and the allowance I've given myself is much, much lower than what I've been spending. The sensible thing would have been to up it a bit, but instead I'm soldiering on. I'll adjust if I need to, but I'm hoping I can stay in the ballpark.
Questions? Ask in the comments and I'll answer as best I can.
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