How do YOU budget?

lessonlearned

mrs_Badger wrote: »

I use pen and paper. If I do anything digitally, I end up writing it out anyway, cos I like nothing more than feet up on the sofa, watching TV, and making plans and lists in a notebook

Me too. I'm an old fashioned penand paper girl. I do like my lists and notebooks. :rotfl:

Although I do my banking online moving. Money around to try and get a bit of decent interest.

In many ways I run my personal finances like a business, keeping a close eye on cashflow and only borrowing when the terms are favourable, by which I mean 0 per cent interest.

I have a small change jar which covers the Christmas food spends and I save up nectar points and boots advantage points

I have finally got to grips with sofa shopping and groupon, so much better than battling my way round crowded shops hunting for bargains.

I also keep a spending diary too. It does help me stay on track.

mrs_motivated

I love spreadsheets and have a different 'page' for each month of the year. I have all income and expenditure listed, bills and savings first and then it divides what's left into different 'pots' such as grocery, car fuel, dog food, hair/beauty, clothes etc. I also have a yearly page, which combines everything (I clearly am a spreadsheet geek lol)


I take my grocery cash out weekly and meal plans are then done with pen and paper though

Margaret_

mrs_Badger wrote: »

I use pen and paper. If I do anything digitally, I end up writing it out anyway, cos I like nothing more than feet up on the sofa, watching TV, and making plans and lists in a notebook

I'm the same, I love lists.

I do all my planning with pen and paper and budget using the 'envelope system' which is a cash system - it's certainly very old style! It works fine for me but I can see it being a faff for anyone with a lot of different outgoings.

Save
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TopsyMum

Pen and paper for me! Just love it that way.

Zed42

Oh dear .... I do this in several different ways, but it works for me.

So ...

I have an annual Excel spreadsheet where I categorise our incomings and outgoings and set the budget there, and review periodically through the year.

I use MS Money for balancing accounts and we keep all receipts and tally them to the bank accounts in there.

I also use MS Money for producing various reports to see where our spend is and for forthcoming bills etc.,

And ...

Our main bank account has 10 separate "pots", so I divvy the money into those to pay bills i.e. car / hols / tax / social / etc,.

I'm an electronic type of person really, although when I first started budgeting (at uni and skint beyond skintness) .. I used an A5 notebook and wrote every single spend religiously, it did concentrate the mind and helped me sort through the time.\

I do like to compartmentalise, so it works for me !

JIL

Can I ask a question of the different purses method, if you go out shopping and you are buying things that need to be paid for out of different purses, how does that work? Especially if the items are from the same shop? Just curious, I think we all do what works for us.

Some on here would be horrified to learn that I buy all my groceries and petrol and holidays on my credit card. I do get cash back for doing so and it is always paid off in full each month.

Kim_kim

I'm ashamed to say I don't budget.
My wages are not paid into my account at the end of the month, my DDs and SOs come out on the first.
I have a regular monthly sum paid into my savings account and that's about it.
What's this ynab do? It must be amazing if MSEers are happy to pay.

Frogletina

Kim_kim wrote: »

What's this ynab do? It must be amazing if MSEers are happy to pay.

Ynab is a budgeting app. I have Ynab4 which is an older desktop version which has a one off payment but will not be supported after this year.

The new version is online and has an ongoing fee - you can trial this at no cost.

https://www.youneedabudget.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=(roi)+branded&utm_content=ynab&utm_term=ynab&gclid=CM2-9cjh4s4CFdS4GwodI9kP1A

Margaret_

JIL wrote: »

Can I ask a question of the different purses method, if you go out shopping and you are buying things that need to be paid for out of different purses, how does that work? Especially if the items are from the same shop? Just curious, I think we all do what works for us.

Some on here would be horrified to learn that I buy all my groceries and petrol and holidays on my credit card. I do get cash back for doing so and it is always paid off in full each month.

This doesn't happen to me very often now I think about it but I think that's because almost all my spending is planned and I buy in different shops and never do a 'big shop' with everything under one roof because I don't have a car. For people who shop that way it'd probably make sense to organise their purse/envelopes into broader categories.

On the rare occasion I'm buying things from more than one category I use the money from whatever envelope covers most of the items and then move money from other envelopes when I get home.

jackyann

JIL wrote: »

Can I ask a question of the different purses method, if you go out shopping and you are buying things that need to be paid for out of different purses, how does that work? Especially if the items are from the same shop? Just curious, I think we all do what works for us.

Some on here would be horrified to learn that I buy all my groceries and petrol and holidays on my credit card. I do get cash back for doing so and it is always paid off in full each month.

That is why I like an electronic budgeter. I keep all recipts, get home, enter them and use the tracker:
eg: 15 pounds at Co-op, 10 on food, 5 on a gift
I put a cash account on Bank Genie and enter cash the same way. I do round up the pounds on that one.

Ad I have used credit cards, paying them off in full every month for the last 40 years. As long as you track the money, that's fine. some people just find that they can't.

Nothing beats what you are most comfortable with.