What are your budget habits?
By Stew
Do you save all your credit card reciepts and then enter them in a spreadsheet at the end of the month?
Do you enter the spending from a particular day every day?
Do you use You Need a Budget?
Are you a cash and envelope user? Once the envelope is empty, your spending stops.
Do you have a particular time set aside to update your budget?
Do you use an Excel spreadsheet to record your spending?
Are you careful to write down every penny?
Are you a Quicken user?
Do you round to the nearest dollar?
Do you just purchase what you need and hope it all comes out okay?
Do you record both income and spending or just spending?
Is your budget a rule that was made to be broken or the “law of the Medes and Persians”?
Is your budget set up to balance weekly, monthly, yearly or not at all?
Are you a member at Mint.com?
If your spouse breaks the budget, do you cover their mistake and hope they don’t do it again?
Is there any portion of your spending that you do not record?
Does your spouse ever see your budget?
How do you handle a surplus in any one area?
Do you record withholding taxes on your budget or do you just keep track of take-home pay?
Are investments and retirement savings a part of your monthly budget or do you just ignore that part of your financial life?
Do you check your budget every day?
How often do you check your bank balance online?
Do you lie awake at night wondering if your budget will balance that month?
Do you just hope your spending is “in the ballpark” of your projected budget?
How long do you keep the previous year’s budget?
Do you discuss your budget with your spouse?
Do you use your credit card statement to balance your budget?
Do you budget for gifts or do those come out of emergency spending?
Do you have good budget habits or bad budget habits?
Do you even keep a budget?
Photo by iChaz
August 24th, 2009 at 9:13 am
I combine a spreadsheet with obsessively checking my bank account balance and activity online.
August 24th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Do you save all your credit card receipts and then enter them in a spreadsheet at the end of the month?—we rarely use our credit cards but only keep receipts if it’s for something large, like a car repair etc..
Do you enter the spending from a particular day every day?–no
Do you use You Need a Budget?—no
Are you a cash and envelope user? Once the envelope is empty, your spending stops.— I am but my SO isn’t so he gets a bit of leeway with his spending money usually the day or two before payday
Do you have a particular time set aside to update your budget?—no I am constantly fiddling with it
Do you use an Excel spreadsheet to record your spending?—yes, I have used Excel and other programs and have always returned to my Excel
Are you careful to write down every penny?—no, I attempted this but it was too much time to spend on my spending when I was sticking to my budget so closely
Are you a Quicken user?—no
Do you round to the nearest dollar?—no, the bank doesn’t why should I?
Do you just purchase what you need and hope it all comes out okay?—yes, but if I get to the end of the money before I get to the end of the month I stop spending.
Do you record both income and spending or just spending?—both
Is your budget a rule that was made to be broken or the “law of the Medes and Persians”?—when I was the only person on my budget it was set in stone, but when my fiancé and I got a joint account it slackened a little.
Is your budget set up to balance weekly, monthly, yearly or not at all?—its meant to balance before each pay cheque
Are you a member at Mint.com?—no
If your spouse breaks the budget, do you cover their mistake and hope they don’t do it again?— kind of, he wants something, I cut back on my spending, but I know it will happen again.
Is there any portion of your spending that you do not record?—I record everything
Does your spouse ever see your budget?—I show it to him all the time, he never remembers anything, but he can’t say that I don’t try to keep him in the loop
How do you handle a surplus in any one area?—we keep a minimum balance of $3000 in our account to avoid fees, anything that is left over after our planned spending goes to the savings account as bonus savings
Do you record withholding taxes on your budget or do you just keep track of take-home pay?
Are investments and retirement savings a part of your monthly budget or do you just ignore that part of your financial life?—-I put $100/month into an RRSP
Do you check your budget every day? —Monday through Friday I look at my budget because it is on my work computer. I look at it and re-run the numbers 5 days a week.
How often do you check your bank balance online?—again at least 5 days a week at my work computer
Do you lie awake at night wondering if your budget will balance that month?—no, I don’t lose sleep over my budget
Do you just hope your spending is “in the ballpark” of your projected budget?—-no I like to keep it exact
How long do you keep the previous year’s budget?—I have only been budgeting for a year but I have my budget with the actual punched in from the beginning
Do you discuss your budget with your spouse?—a few times a week, we are always talking about future plans and how much we need to set aside etc..
Do you use your credit card statement to balance your budget?—no I do online banking and we rarely use our credit cards and carry no balance
Do you budget for gifts or do those come out of emergency spending?—no this is something I have considered and as it coming on to the gift giving season we need to sit down and work this into our budget
Do you have good budget habits or bad budget habits?””mostly good budget habits, there are times when I leave the budget behind, usually when my SO wants something I just let him get it. I like to keep him happy
Do you even keep a budget?””yes.
August 24th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
I track our income and expense records in Quicken. We use “to the penny” when receipts are available, and zero out as unknown cash flow for expenses we can’t pin down.
The theory is: I will compare our Quicken data to the Crown Financial Ministries household budget percentage recommendations.
The reality is: I had a computer crash, and lost nearly a year of Quicken data about the same time I was getting used to a new software version. It was possible to rebuild the records for at least part of that time since I had not yet shredded the documents. So, I decided to backtrack as much as possible.
The current status is: Still in progress.
August 24th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
I’ve been checking out Mint, Wesabe, and BudgetPulse to determine the best way to allocate my funds. I tried Quicken, but Excel has always made me want to cry and I know I’ll do no good at budgeting if it’s not in a format that I enjoy looking at. Good checklist for people to go through! I noticed some things I’d been forgetting.
August 24th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
We use google docs (excel) for our monthly budget (before paydays). Then we pull cash out to use the envelopes system described by Dave Ramsey so we dont track reciepts, when the $$$ is gone we know we need to wait to next pay day. We are flexible with our budget if some opportunity comes up during the month that we agree on to do. For savings/investments we try to automate where we can. We are on salaried income so for us budgeting is like auto pilot.
August 24th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Do you save all your credit card reciepts and then enter them in a spreadsheet at the end of the month?
i save the credit card receipts but don’t do a spreadsheet
Do you enter the spending from a particular day every day?
no
Do you use You Need a Budget?
no
Are you a cash and envelope user? Once the envelope is empty, your spending stops.
no
Do you have a particular time set aside to update your budget?
no
Do you use an Excel spreadsheet to record your spending?
no
Are you careful to write down every penny?
no
Are you a Quicken user?
no
Do you round to the nearest dollar?
no
Do you just purchase what you need and hope it all comes out okay?
yes
Do you record both income and spending or just spending?
neither :(
Is your budget a rule that was made to be broken or the “law of the Medes and Persians”?
budget??
Is your budget set up to balance weekly, monthly, yearly or not at all?
naa
Are you a member at Mint.com?
no
If your spouse breaks the budget, do you cover their mistake and hope they don’t do it again?
n/a
Is there any portion of your spending that you do not record?
i keep all my receipts, even cash ones….
Does your spouse ever see your budget?
n/a
How do you handle a surplus in any one area?
goes to car repair usually (i deliver newspapers and the car always needs fixing/maintenance
Do you record withholding taxes on your budget or do you just keep track of take-home pay?
self-employed….
Are investments and retirement savings a part of your monthly budget or do you just ignore that part of your financial life?
um, i don’t want to ignore but have not gotten debt paid down yet, so i am trying to get enough of an emergency fund first,…the others will have to wait
Do you check your budget every day?
budget??
How often do you check your bank balance online?
whenever i need to figure out if i have enough in there to pay a check or something huge
Do you lie awake at night wondering if your budget will balance that month?
budget?? :)
Do you just hope your spending is “in the ballpark” of your projected budget?
basically i hope my spending is in the ballpark of what i make (like there are no major things that need to be taken care of: this month i lost my glasses so that was a bit unexpected and i’m blind as a bat so that was a necessary deal
How long do you keep the previous year’s budget?
budget??
Do you discuss your budget with your spouse?
spouse??
Do you use your credit card statement to balance your budget?
budget??
Do you budget for gifts or do those come out of emergency spending?
um…they come out of whatever money i have that month…
Do you have good budget habits or bad budget habits?
oooooh, i would say very bad, atrocious even….
Do you even keep a budget?
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…i keep trying but that requires time and energy and discipline…i am a single working, homeschooling mom. i juggle kid pickup/dropoff every day along with 30-40 hours of school and 40-50 hours of work every week…i have machine maintenance between the car for newspaper delivery and the mowers for my lawn business…discipline is not a thing that was highly required in the family i grew up in so whatever organization i DO have is innate or acquired over a period of time…working on it this year because i am finally tired of not being organized/disciplined in the financial or other aspects of my life…i did have a financial budget thing with mvelopes thru crown financial for 2 or 3 years but i just didn’t do the work for it so it was money wasted for me…
August 25th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
I check our accounts almost every day. I do use mint.com. My husband and I are getting better about planning a budget — it’s taken us 15 years! We are doing Dave Ramsey’s snowball right now and making great progress. But we haven’t yet gone the envelope route…
August 26th, 2009 at 8:45 am
We pay for everything with debit or credit cards (and always pay them off) so I use these statements to track and categorize our spending. I update my spreadsheets at least once a week, usually more though.
October 6th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Can I just say what a relief to find someone who actually knows what theyre talking about on the internet. You definitely know how to bring an issue to light and make it important. More people need to read this and understand this side of the story. I cant believe youre not more popular because you definitely have the gift.