Ask Lemmy

My only budgeting is to earn much more than I spent so I don't have to think too much about it. That means that I live quite frugal and other than food don't really buy much on a regular basis.

I believe the system I use is called reckless abandon.

YNAB = you need a budget

YNAB is a web app and mobile app. It's beauty is that it helps you look FORWARD, instead of tracking your PAST spending.

It's not much use to see that you spent too much last month, again. Instead, YNAB helps you know what your average expenses are and lets you set aside meaningful amounts for each kind of expense = that's what we call a BUDGET.

Yes, it has a cost. Yes, it's ironic to spend money on a tool to save money. But here's the thing: it really works! For me, it's easily worth the cost.

www.ynab.com

I have my wife handle the budget and finances. She is very responsible. I am not.

The system works very well.

“Pay yourself first”. My bank has a feature that allows me to setup automated money transfers to and from different accounts based on rules I setup. The most important one is when any deposit is received from my employer, 20% of the amount is automatically transferred from my chequing account to my retirement account. My paycheque is deposited overnight and the money is already “gone” by the time I wake up in the morning. Treat it like another tax on your income that you have no way to avoid paying. Then live off what’s left.

My wife and I have a pretty simple method. First, we each have our own bank accounts with our own spending money. Then, we have a joint account that we use for bills. Finally, we have a separate bank that we use for groceries and gas.

With these allocated separately, we can each have our own spending money, and have enough in every other account to take care of what we need. The paycheck just gets split between these in different direct deposit amounts.

The most important thing is to understand your costs, plan them out, and be aware of what comes out and when. Then, you just follow that plan. The biggest part is making sure you know that you can only spend exactly that much on yourself, which is where our individual accounts come in handy. Whatever we want to buy, we can, because we know safely that our needs are taken care of.

Since we have our math to allow more money in than money out, each account (minus our spending ones) accrue their own savings, and can be transferred between at any time. Overall, it works for us.

I just go into notes app or pen and paper of choice nothing too fancy

Also take this with a grain of salt as while I’m still living with my parents and don’t really pay

In one section I have subscriptions that cannot exceed like $35 a month and that’s more a list that rarely gets updated

Then as for month to month expenses I divide into money to spend on games and toys/treats for my dogs and taking out the gf and gas and an other category and I allocate money towards those categories

I do it so I don’t over spend in one section like blow all my money on my dogs then have no money to spend for my girlfriend or something

Each month when I “refresh” my monthly budget any unspent money (and minus some to put into savings) rolls over to next months budget

It works wonders and I can move money for spending around easy since it’s all visual

Chaos. It's stressful but somehow it works

I avoid automatic payments like the plague. I never give insurance companies, utilities, credit companies, etc. permission to withdraw from my account. All it takes is one underpaid office drone to make a mistake, and you’re overcharged a thousand dollars. You can (probably) get the money back, but not without a time consuming hassle.

Ever notice that billing mistakes on paper bills are virtually never in your favor? In my experience, I’ve always been overcharged, and never undercharged. I don’t expect automatic payments to be any different.

I let them mail me paper bills, which I then pay through my bank’s website. When the payment is made, I write the confirmation number on the bill itself. Yes, it’s more cumbersome, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay. There’s a verifiable paper trail, and I’m completely in control. Since it’s my money, I deserve to be.

GnuCash. I'm with Starling Bank. I transfer about £550 to my credit card pot to spend for the month and do my very best not to exceed it. I have an Amex (default) and MasterCard credit cards on which all my day-to-day spending occurs. American Express gives me a balance text every Sunday, but entering purchases in GnuCash makes sure I know what it is roughly.

I have an Excel workbook with three worksheets. One worksheet calculates my paydays out over the next few years, and using Excel formulas a table of paydays per month is calculated. I get paid every two weeks, so some months are 3 pay checks and the rest are 2. If you get paid a fixed amount per month it's easier.

The next sheet has tables for annual, monthly, and weekly expenses. The annual table has a column for month of the year. If I have a quarterly payment, I add it to the annual table four times, each with the correct month.

The final worksheet is a basic revenue less expenses table, one for each calendar year. It lists my income per month for each month, and then lists my monthly expenses, my annual expenses that hit that month, and weekly expenses calculated to reflect the partial weeks. All using formulas do it is easy to extend out to future years.

The worksheet also calculated how much I have left over, and what my savings target is (80% of unbudgeted funds). It's important for the actual costs of each month to be accurate, because averages hide real world things, like in November I have a large amount of renewals including my annual car insurance payment. I will always spend more than I make in November, and knowing that means I'm not panicking with unexpected expenses.

What I've found is that there is an art to budgeting. For example, I budget $100/month for discretionary purchases, plus $20/week to take my kids out for cocoa. You want to be specific enough in the budget that you have fairly few purchases not directly accounted for, with a little bit of latitude that it doesn't become a grind to track purchases.

Over the course of the month any purchase that exceeds the budgeted amount or that doesn't fit a budget category gets tracked on a separate sheet so I can see if I need to rebudget or if there was just a one time thing. Generally speaking, if it is too much work to track your individual purchases, you might be making too many small or impulse purchases that add up.

I also use Excel for my shopping lists to stay focused when I go to the store, and the mobile app easily lets me strike through items as I get them.

Maybe a bit basic but at the beginning of every month I clone this Google Sheets template, set goals in each category, and manually log receipts as I spend. Then at the end of the month, I "audit" my budget against my credit card transactions, pay off credit, and create the next month's budget with any adjustments learned from the previous one.

For bigger view, long-term, I just linked all my accounts into Quicken and look at it sometimes.

I use one credit card for groceries and other essential items and another one for "luxury" expenses like buying hardware, games, online subscriptions and such.

Other than that I just use my default online banking to occationally check that everything is alright.

I have a single spreadsheet with fairly simple formulas for calculating monthly expenses based on average recurring bills vs. (after tax) salary income.

I can see generally what my "discretionary" balance should be and that gets spent on food, stuff, etc.

Things that are recurring: Mortgage, Utilities (take annual average if you can), services, savings, etc.

Use savings like any other bill - a certain amount must be paid/deposited every month. Use automatic balance transfers from checking->savings on payday to facilitate.

I don't try to get too fancy with it and heavily leverage automatic bill pay for making sure I can't forget anything.

Check all your accounts regularly. For me that's a weekend task to do with my morning coffee. Check account balances, make sure credit accounts are addressed as needed, review investments if applicable, but don't freak out about them.

I'm partial to treating investments as long term gambles that are NOT something I'm relying on for retirement. It's just something else to slowly build up over the long run that might be something that can help later or pass on.

We have a retroactive Google Sheet which pulled from Reddit years ago where we put our transactions in and categorise them. Lets us see where we spent money

My bank has some neat online banking features that break down where my money comes from and where I spend it on. It also compares my current expenses to my monthly average so I can see if I’m spending more. I’m sure I can do better by doing it on my own, but for someone lazy like me, it’s a good starting point to get an overview of my finances.

My bank app has an "available balance" based on regular bills I've input. That has helped.

I want to get cash out and do envelopes for categories of things I buy in person.

No

As Jackie Mason said, "I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something."

I use a spreadsheet. When I need to budget, I download my transaction history as a CSV and a couple of simple sumif formulas give me all the info I need.

I'm not aware of a good FOSS solution software-wise and frankly I don't want my entire financial history to be accessible to a data mining firm.

Don't autopay when possible, keep your credit cards down to one or two and itemize at the end of the month so you can catch things adding up. Things like groceries, budget roughly around the same amount each time, things like eating out, door dash etc that's where the itemization comes in, do the math or use an app to help add it up. Put money into a savings account whenever you have extra. Do not, I repeat do not look at your bank and go "sweet I have an extra $300 this month, time for a new [whatever]", put it in the savings

I guilt myself out of buying things I don't need. I ask myself "Do you really need that? You have x at home."

I import my transactions into Beancount, a plain text accounting software, a few times a year. My setup uses basic machine learning to classify each transaction. This gives me a decent understanding of my situation when combined with Fava, which visualizes the data.

Each month I save a set amount of money automatically into a few different index funds.

I make sure everything that is a monthly payment is something I actually use. Only one streaming service at a time, cheapest phone service etc.

I keep an eye on my main account every now and then to see how much I have. If i feel like it is stacking up more than what I may need in a short amount of time, I either buy more index funds or put it in an account with interest on it. If the main account ever runs out of money I have done something wrong.

I would say I don't really budget. For me I do not feel the need. I am by no means rich, but not spending money on wasteful things really does a lot. E.g. make food most of the time instead of eating out, cut your own hair, only buy things that last and do your research before buying anything significant.

Please keep in mind I live in the EU and pay a sort of salary insurance so I do not have to stress a lot if something were to happen to change my situation.

There are apps that can automatically track in- and outgoing payments for your account, as well as classify them to give you an overview. I use Finanzguru, though I suspect that's only available in Germany.

If you're struggling with money, here's my approach: If it isn't absolutely necessary to have, sleep on it at least once before buying it, no matter how cheap it is. Works quite well, its weird how much your perspective can often change within a day.

20% off the paychecks directly to registered retirement account. Use a cashback credit card for everything, pay it off every paycheck, and watch carefully that the balance doesn't exceed what you can pay off. This is key, never pay card interest. Nice hefty reward from that every year. For things that can't be charged to the card, annualized payment from a high interest savings account which I replenish every paycheck just enough to ensure all the annual payments can be drawn when the times come, all tracked with a spreadsheet for each bill. Extra goes in there for emergency funds, avoids paying interest when unexpected costs come up.

I write all my expenses and incomes down onto app called Wallet by budget bakers. I don't set any monthly budgets or anything however, because I find that keeping track alone already makes me much more mindful consumer. I already have records of my finances for almost 3 years so it's pretty interesting to get to monitor my spending across a long timeframe.