Our Actual Budget
Thanks for visiting Ultimate Money Blog! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.
I’ve never shared our actual “budget” here before. I use the term loosely, because it’s more of a monthly expenses spreadsheet. I have shared my envelope system, and that still works pretty well for me. Thinking about having a real budget where I take into account how much we get paid gives me a headache. Mr. Money gets paid bi-weekly, and I had made our “budget” on a 1st and 15th pay schedule, so it confuses me to think about switching it. I really need to sit down and do that. Seriously. But here are our monthly expenses:
Mortgage 793.19 1st
Energy 200.00 15th
Car insurance 130.00 15th
Escrow 205.44 (new since refinance)
Verizon 70.00 1st
Cable, phone, internet 115.00 15th
Car Payment 250.00 15th
Water 33.00 bimonthly
Food 300.00 1st & 15th
Gas 300.00 1st & 15th
Eating Out 100.00 1st & 15th
The bad thing is, for example, our electricity bill is not $200.00 a month. It was only $53.57 a couple months ago. So the extra money I have budgeted for that just sits in our checking account. I don’t put that in a separate fund or anything. I guess it’s just easier for me to do it this way.
I’m not one of the hard core budgeters who knows where every penny of their money is going. I’ll be the first to admit I could stop withdrawing so much cash every week and spending it because the truth is, when I have cash I’ll spend it. I should follow my own advice and do my own envelope system again. How I use this budget is like this: at the beginning of the month, all of the categories are red. As I go through and pay the bills, I highlight them and turn them to green. If I ever think, oh, have I paid the Verizon bill? I just look up my spreadsheet, see that I have, and then forget about it. It works for me!
What are your honest thoughts about my budgeting?
I’m a little confused about a few things — are you spending $300 per month on food, or is it $600? And the same for gas? And when you say gas, does that mean gasoline for your cars?
Do you have 2 cars?
Also, $300 per month on gasoline seems pretty high. I don’t know how far you guys have to drive, though.
I don’t see life insurance policies on your budget. Maybe you pay them at once instead of setting aside money?
[Reply]
Have you tried budget billing for your electric bill? If you electric company offers it, they will take the ‘average’ of all your bills for the past year and give you a new monthly amount. This will allow you to budget that bill better. They adjust it at the end of each year, depending on how much electricity you actually used, giving you a credit or a higher bill.
We do this with our electric and gas bill. If not the electric soars in summer (with a/c) and gas bill soars in winter with gas heating. It just got too hard to budget otherwise.
Good luck!
[Reply]