While I'm obsessing here...

[mousme]

Despite the fact that I'm no longer hurting for money, I get the impression that I need to be more on top of my finances than I currently am. I mean, all my bills get paid on time now, and everything gets filed away neatly, but I don't keep a close record of where my money goes: I only have a general idea.

I'm thinking of getting myself a ledger, or something. That way I could, if properly disciplined, keep track of all the money that goes in and out. I'd have to keep receipts more carefully, but it would help me to see where my money goes and identify potential spending problems (at a guess: books and DVDs, since they're my primary "leisure" expenditures). Not that I know how to use a proper accounting ledger or anything, but I bet I could learn.

So, dear flist ('cause I haven't asked enough questions lately :P), how do you manage your household finances?

Comments

[striped.livejournal.com]

The only system that has worked me this far is this: I calculate my income for a few months in advance. (I can only do this a few months at a time because my income is very irregular.) Then I write down how much money I should have at the end of each week, based on my income, big expenses like mortgage, and a daily sum from which I must pay for food, other everyday items and smaller bills. So on any given day I try not to buy anything that costs over my daily budget if I haven't gone under the budget yesterday - no advances! And every Monday I check whether I have any extra money, and if I do, I can buy something nice for myself.

This is maybe a kind of a weird and control-freakish system, but I've found that now that I have very little money at this point of my life, keeping a very tight short-term budget is the only thing that keeps me from spending everything at once. It forces me to prioritize the bills and food and only then think about clothes and CD's.

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

I don't necessarily recommend this method.

Don't use cash -- make sure everything is paid by one credit card and electronic bill pay. Then log in to my credit card and bank, and use that as my ledger. It says how much money was spent and the vendor, and from that I can usually tell what it was for.

Essentially, it's a poor man's Quicken. The trick for me is to not use cash, because that can't be tracked electronically.

[joane.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much how we do it, except with debit cards and online banking. And it's by default, since neither of us is in any way capable of keeping a checkbook or receipts straight for more than two or three transactions in a row.

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

Same here -- default option because I'm horribly flighty about keeping track of money and my wife usually doesn't want to deal with it.

[dizietsma.livejournal.com]

I withdraw at least a couple hundred in cash per month just for all those mini cash transactions that would cost me a fortune in bank fees if I went and put them all on the card.

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

Bills come in. As much money as can be applied to them goes out. Cursing and prayer accompanies each movement respectively.

There's no rhyme or reason to it. We really hardly ever buy things other than food and pay bills and there's never any left.

Sometimes they get paid on time. I tried keeping rec'ts, frustrated the hell out of me. Everything is paid online or with a check I can see online if I want to see where the money went in general.

[dizietsma.livejournal.com]

Only track enough of the past to make your plans for the future accurate. Plan out the next N salary periods in a spreadsheet (for your sanity, keep it to less than 3 months' worth), columns for time periods and one row each for bills and other big expenditures. Group the little annoying-to-track stuff together into blobs (e.g. "entertainment budget: $50") and budget a set amount of cash for them per time period. Later I can then reflect on why I ran out of cash or why I still have a couple of twenties left over, and adjust accordingly.

This is the theory, in practice I'm a lot more haphazard about it.

The future plan does not look smooth, but that's the whole point. I get paid every fortnight, but I pay rent and bills every month. Some salaries are completely free of bills so we use those for a big grocery/clothes shop, or for saving-up to cover for a future fortnight that's going to be tight, or squirrel some away into a savings account.

[swestrup]

Right now we don't track our finances...

Back when I was single I would withdraw a weekly 'allowance' in cash for all personal expenses for the week, and if there was any left come the weekend (the amount was chosen so there usually was) I could blow it on books or games or put it into a savings account for some bigger purchase later.

The rest of the money went to investments and to pay bills and if there was any left of that left when payday next rolled around then it went into an emergency savings fund.

Since I've gotten married we've not managed to figure out a way to organize our money that works for both of us, as we have completely different ways of handling money.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

I use the budget spreadsheet that comes with Microsoft Excel. Every week I go through my bank account online and add "spent" money to the "actuals" columns. Every month I under-budget something, usually money spent on dining out. But it helps me plan for bills and groceries and gasoline, even if there's never any money left at the end of the month.

[sorceror.livejournal.com]

I started keeping track for the first three & a half months of this year. So far I haven't done anything with the data, but the intention was to add it up at some point, I think. :-P

Having just expended a huge amount of money to pay my taxes (damn you, Ottawa! And damn you twice over, Quebec City!), I too am now re-inspired to figure it out. It was very frustrating going to H&R Block and having them say "Oh, you know, if you'd done this, you could claim it as an expense!".

[elanya.livejournal.com]

Like you, I file all my bills (or I eventually do - I have a bit of a backlog of actually physical filing to do). I also write on them now when I pay them. I specifically don't use online bill pay systems because sometime I need to juggle payment dates and sources of money, but even it it wasn't true, keeping track of in manually makes me stay engaged with my fiancial situation - I can't just assume bills will take care of themselves, I'm less likely to miss payments, etc.

I don't have a lot of other money to worry about (which is nice way of putting it, I think :p), but what in tend to do is what other people have said - take out my spending money in cash. That way it is more absolutely finite and it easier for me to keep track of how much I have spent and make sure I don't overspend.

When I am making online purchases, I always check my bank statements or credit card or noth, to figure out how much I've got to work with - reviewing them helps me realize what my other expenses have been lately.

TBH most of my 'free' money is spent on food. Or Jola. -_-

I have toyed with the idea of using excel or some specifically financial software to keep track of stuff, but my finances aren't too much to keep track of at this point, so I'm not worrying about it. it might help you out though - I know my mom used to used some microsoft software for her budgeting . I don't think she had to buy it special, it came with the general MS Office stuff.

[luvenditti.livejournal.com]

I don't know dude, I'm still working on that myself. I have discovered that if I want to save some money, I mean REALLY save it, I've got to take it out in cash and put it in a "this is the vacay box" box, because if it's in the bank, my debit card just keeps going through.

SO, my best coping mechanism has been to allot myself a specific amount of spending money for a week, and that goes in my wallet, and no going for the debit card unless it's planned. ... I'm still working on the discipline involved.

Many great suggestions... May I add to them?

[blackbuffet.livejournal.com]

I also use a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet which keeps a precise ledger of EVERY PENNY I spend. If I hand over a penny to a beggar on the street, it goes in the ledger. After doing that for a trimester, I look back at my spending patterns for each month to analyse where my money is going EXACTLY and where I need to improve. This had helped me drastically improve from one semester to another as I stop wasting money where I throw it away and try to save it instead. For sure, one month to another... there can be some excess here and some deficit there but over a three month period, you will have a pretty good idea where you are going and how you want to balance out better for the following months. (Last but not least: The best piece of advice I can give you is to write it all in every night. Don't skip. Don't cheat. Don't wait a week to tally it all up. Day by day. It will make you more sensible to where the money is going and how fast it is flowing...)