budget update
I'm pleased to report that the money managing process is going really well in our soon to be married home.
After taking a lot of your suggestions Jeff and I talked about creating a budget with categories and everything. It was scary as I'd never been very good at sticking to categories and Jeff had never had money to do much of anything till about a year ago. But, we both felt eager to grow ourselves and to take steps to becoming financially savvy.
I took the first steps and sat down and looked at our expenses and made categories. I was able to cobble together some historical figures for how much we've spent on each jointly (I had these figures from when we were living together and sharing expenses--rather than considering our income as one stream). Then I wrote down the list of categories, put the average we spent per month next to it and asked Jeff to determine how much we should be spending per category. I agreed with his numbers and constructed a spreadsheet that listed each of our paychecks and the amounts for each category and savings and let Jeff figure out how to fund everything. (I'd stick the spreadsheet in, but LJ won't let me as it's either an .xl or .pdf)
Despite being initially terrified Jeff LOVES the spreadsheet and the budgeting categories process. LOVES IT! He cashes his paycheck and then uses the spreadsheet to fund each category; I continue to bill pay most of our monthly bills and put the balance into either savings or our joint budget categories. We each get $100/week to spend on lunches, dinners with friends, stuff, etc. After a month of living on this budget we're well under in most of the categories (which might be the whoah we're living within a budget effect) and yet we feel wealthier than ever before. I'm sort of shocked really.
And we're saving 30% of our take home income (19.6% of our net income) for our emergency savings/wedding/honeymoon. Unfortunately, Jeff has been sick and he doesn't get sick time--so he's all panicked about not being able to stick to the budget. I just reassure him that we save a little less and stay within our budget which is why we designed this thing in the first place.
Let's see how month 2 goes.
After taking a lot of your suggestions Jeff and I talked about creating a budget with categories and everything. It was scary as I'd never been very good at sticking to categories and Jeff had never had money to do much of anything till about a year ago. But, we both felt eager to grow ourselves and to take steps to becoming financially savvy.
I took the first steps and sat down and looked at our expenses and made categories. I was able to cobble together some historical figures for how much we've spent on each jointly (I had these figures from when we were living together and sharing expenses--rather than considering our income as one stream). Then I wrote down the list of categories, put the average we spent per month next to it and asked Jeff to determine how much we should be spending per category. I agreed with his numbers and constructed a spreadsheet that listed each of our paychecks and the amounts for each category and savings and let Jeff figure out how to fund everything. (I'd stick the spreadsheet in, but LJ won't let me as it's either an .xl or .pdf)
Despite being initially terrified Jeff LOVES the spreadsheet and the budgeting categories process. LOVES IT! He cashes his paycheck and then uses the spreadsheet to fund each category; I continue to bill pay most of our monthly bills and put the balance into either savings or our joint budget categories. We each get $100/week to spend on lunches, dinners with friends, stuff, etc. After a month of living on this budget we're well under in most of the categories (which might be the whoah we're living within a budget effect) and yet we feel wealthier than ever before. I'm sort of shocked really.
And we're saving 30% of our take home income (19.6% of our net income) for our emergency savings/wedding/honeymoon. Unfortunately, Jeff has been sick and he doesn't get sick time--so he's all panicked about not being able to stick to the budget. I just reassure him that we save a little less and stay within our budget which is why we designed this thing in the first place.
Let's see how month 2 goes.