Archive for the 'Budgeting' Category
Just a quick reminder that I’m tracking my expenses in February, and everyone with a similar inclination should join in the fun.
Here are the categories I assigned myself in PearBudget:
Regular Expenses - Housing, Phone, Cable, Internet, Garbage, Insurance
Variable Expenses - Gasoline, Electricity/Gas, Groceries, Dining out, Household, Personal Care, Pet Care, Recreation, Everything Else
Irregular Expenses - Car Repair, Travel, Gifts, Healthcare, Water/Sewer
My receipt spike is excited! I’ll check back in after a week.
Posted in Budgeting | No Comments »
I fell off the budgeting wagon months ago, and haven’t been back on since. I’m still saving a good chunk of money each month, but it’s high time that I drink my own Kool-Aid and start tracking my expenses.
I haven’t been overly impressed with either Money and Quicken in the past, so I needed to find an alternative. After browsing through my big list of free budgeting tools, I’ve decided to try the PearBudget spreadsheet out first. It seemed to be the best candidate for me because:
It’s free, and it won’t stop working after 2 years, either!
It’s offline, so no worrying about importing files or syncing problems.
It’s flexible; I can update every day or once a month, whatever works.
It’s simple. I’m only concerned about tracking expenses. I don’t need any other features to distract me or take up more time.
In fact, there are only 2 steps that require any effort:
I just finished the first step today, which is name the categories you want to track and give some rough estimates. It really did only take 10 minutes.
To help me with the second step, I went out and bought one of those restaurant receipt spindles from OfficeMax for $2. My plan is to get receipts for everything, and whenever I get home to spear them all on the spike. Every day or two, I’ll empty the spike and punch in a few quick numbers into PearBudget. All tax-deductible expenses will be stored in a folder for tax time. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? I plan to start tracking in February. I invite anyone interested to join me and discover exactly how our money is spent during any given month!
Posted in Budgeting, Goals | 64 Comments »
Ever wondered where your taxes went? Who has the time to actually read our $2.8 trillion budget? Well, now there’s an easier way: the incredibly high-res Visual Guide to the Federal Budget. From the site:
Knowledge of how your taxes are spent is essential to being a responsible citizen. If people actually knew what their thousands of dollars of income taxes paid for, there would be rioting in the streets, or at least some more accountability in Congress.
Posted in Budgeting, General | 5 Comments »
I went over understanding your spending and also free budgeting tools. Once you start managing your money better, you should be spending less than you earn. Or maybe you have come across a lump sum of money somehow. Now what do you do with the money? Although everyone’s situation is different, I think that a good discussion can evolve from this.
Here’s a list of possibilities:
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Posted in Budgeting, Investing, Real Estate | 56 Comments »
More than a month ago, I wrote a post about tracking your spending for a month. I tried to think of the best way to budget, but I don’t think there is anything that works for everyone.
Everyone knows about MS Money and Quicken, so instead I’ve decided to compile a resource of free budgeting tools so that people can try them out on their own. Try a few. Get some ideas. Make your own. The important thing is to find something that works for you.
Here they are in no particular order:
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Posted in Budgeting, Tools & Calculators | 45 Comments »
Pop Quiz: How much money did you spend on food last month?
I’ve been blogging about money now for almost two years, and I’ve been wanting to put together a kind of distillation of all the things that I’ve learned. All these posts are the equivalent of rough drafts, so comments are welcome.
Taking a step back and thinking of what is the first step to setting yourself up for financial security, the first thing I thought of was to make a budget and make sure you spend less than you earn. But then I thought, before even doing that, I think you need to first sit back and observe your current habits. What are you spending now?
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Posted in Budgeting | 37 Comments »
You’d think that with all the accounts that I have, I would love getting my bills electronically. Nope. I recently tried to go 100% e-bill. Nearly ended very badly with multiple late payments. I get so many e-mails a day, it’s just too easy for me to put them off initially. Of course, if it then gets pushed off the first page of e-mails, I may never see it again for weeks.
Paper bills are nice in that even with a cluttered desktop, I still clean it off constantly and at most I wait a few days before paying the bill online. For some reason, also having a hardcopy of the bill for recordkeeping is comforting. Anyhow, not that anyone cares, but I’m now back to 100% paper bills. Even if Citi keeps dangling that $5 carrot to get me back…
Posted in Budgeting | 36 Comments »
Most homeowners may already know this, but since I’ve never had to purchase a bunch of large appliances, I only noticed this recently while fawning over fancy appliances (Man, I’m getting old). When stores like Home Depot, Lowes, or Best Buy offer “No payments and no interest for 12 months”, it’s true, but with an interesting catch. If you don’t pay in full before that 12 months ends, they will charge you back interest for the full price of the purchase from the date of purchase, often at about 20% APR! It doesn’t just start accruing from when the promo period ends.
Here’s an example. You buy a nice stainless steel fridge and oven range for $1,500. You’re happy, paying nothing for 364 days. If you pay it off early, you pay $1,500. If you figure, well, I’ll wait after the whole 12 months is up and then start paying it off, you get to pay $1,800 ($300 more!)
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Posted in Budgeting | 18 Comments »
I’ve had my SunRocket
VoIP phone line for over a year now, and was happy to renew it for another $199 per year (see my Sunrocket Review for more about the service). Shortly after agreeing to another year at $199, I read somewhere on DSLReports that people who were calling in near their 1-year anniversary were being offered a 1-year extension for $99. Of course, I wanted in.
But when I called, they said that I was already locked in for $199, and that I would have to wait until the end of that year to ask again for the $99 deal. Bummer. Well, after calling back with some polite sweet-talking and a month of waiting, it looks like I got it. $100 saved for not giving up, cha-ching! So if you have Sunrocket and are near your 1-year anniversary, I’d definitely recommend calling in before your annual contract renews.
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Posted in Budgeting, Deals & Offers | 17 Comments »
It’s been a year now since we’ve gotten our kid… err, dog. Cavalier King Charles Spaniel to be exact. I know this because we just had our annual vet appointment for more shots and a general exam. This got me to thinking how much we’ve spent on pet care over the last year. I think many people who get pets fail to realize the financial committment that it requires. They also may underestimate the emotional attachment you get to your pup. I know I did.
Since we broke the $1000 cost barrier only 3 months into having him, we’ve actually settled down to a nice routine with him. Basically all the things we bought, like the crate, bed, leash, nail clippers, etc. were all decent quality and are still working just fine. Here are the rest of our expenses.
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Posted in Budgeting | 25 Comments »
~8%, not bad. At least it’s greater than inflation. I don’t think it takes effect until July, but it’s nice to know it’s coming. To celebrate, we just ordered a new Nissan Xterra SE 4×4 - just kidding! I don’t think we’re going to do anything different at all. How boring.
On that note, I’m following her on a conference trip this week. I’ll still be posting, but my e-mail turnaround time will be even worse than usual…
Posted in Budgeting | 13 Comments »
My ‘How Do You Budget?‘ post was a nice success, and the giveaway winner has been notified. Here is a breakdown of the replies:
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Posted in Budgeting | 6 Comments »
The comments in my last post went off in a wonderful direction - people sharing how they budget. I’ve haven’t yet improved my own simple but ineffective budgeting system, so clearly I need some new ideas, as I’m sure others do as well. Therefore - How do YOU budget?
Do you use pen and paper? Excel spreadsheet? Which one? Quicken? MS Money? Open-source version? Online software? Spousal nagging?
If you contribute, you will be entered in a drawing for a free 1-year subscription to either Forbes or SmartMoney. Spread the word and share!
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Posted in Budgeting | 51 Comments »
Just because I have been ignoring my budget (my last budget update was back in early December), doesn’t mean you should! Someone just sent me a link about MySpendingPlan.com, a free online budgeting software system that works on the ‘envelope system‘.
I’ve made an account and fooled around a bit, but haven’t really gave it a real trial run yet. It looks like you still have to enter all your transactions manually, similar to the You Need A Budget System (review), so I have a feeling I personally won’t go for it. The site does also ask some weirdly probing questions (why do they need to know my address?), most likely because they seem get their revenue by hooking you up with mortgage brokers and real estate agents. But hey, it’s free, so I can’t complain.
Posted in Budgeting | 11 Comments »
Here’s a tough question I got via e-mail, paraphrased:
“I finally got a stable job. I have $9,000 in credit card debt, half at 12.99% and half at 8.99% APR. I have no emergency funds at all, that is why I have so much debt. Should I pay down the credit cards or should I build a backup money fund? Do you think I should apply for more credit cards to lower the APR?”
This was in response to my Emergency Fund options post. As I am not the best person to ask about getting out of credit card debt, I’m throwing this out there for feedback. Here’s what I have off the top of my head:
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Posted in Budgeting | 18 Comments »
