What is your method for weekly budgeting?

MrJester

Hi all so I've began doing a weekly budget, I have consistently been broke at the end of the month so I've got it all worked out now so that each week I have a budget to stick to. This weekly budget is AFTER direct debit/regular payments.

What would be good is to be able to see this budget as one balance that I can spend. Right now I just have all my money in the one bank account, so the money for the debits are there for when they come out, but at a glance I have to count what I've spent for example to know how much I have left for the week. I dont want to have to do this every single day, I want to make it a bit easier so I can see at a glance what I have left and can stick to it this new method.

I recently added an 'everyday saver' account to start putting some money aside for a 'rainy day fund', this is within the same bank account. I can get an ATM card with it if I wanted to.

I have credit cards, which I'm paying off, but there is one thats quite low and will be paid off soon. I considered using it as my spends card and pay off in full each month, but I'm worried about doing this. I somewhat dont trust myself.

I pay for most things on card, I dont like keeping cash on me (London) and I buy a lot of things online so its easier just to see all the transactions for what I've bought within a time period.

I'm signed up to Money Dashboard but cant configure it for a weekly budget very easily either.

How do you MSE-ers go about having a weekly budget that is clear to see?

edit: to simplify, I want to be able to see three seperate balances:

• Balance for direct debits / main pot
• Balance for weekly budget
• Balance for savings

knack92

I use You Need A Budget and think it's great. They have mobile apps for on the go use. The only problem for you is that it is a monthly budget rather than weekly, but you could work around this when setting up the budget. Their website has lots of helpful info.

FinallyGettingFree

Another vote for YNAB! It's category based so you don't need to look at your bank account at all, just what you have in your various categories.

You can get around the weekly/monthly thing by literally having a "week 1" category etc.

MrJester

FinallyGettingFree wrote: »

Another vote for YNAB! It's category based so you don't need to look at your bank account at all, just what you have in your various categories.

You can get around the weekly/monthly thing by literally having a "week 1" category etc.

But YNAB costs, and I've got money dash and ontrees both which are free. And similarly isnt a proper way to set a week budget. As they are too based on selecting categories of items, which may go so far towards what I'm looking for but if it misses stuff then it could be bad for me and still will take the same amount of checking transactions hah