Just wondering who else is really into budgeting and want to chat? I don't really have an actual direction of this thread haha. Maybe can start with what your budgeting method is? Any major goals you're saving for next year? I'll reply in comments!
Just wondering who else is really into budgeting and want to chat? I don't really have an actual direction of this thread haha. Maybe can start with what your budgeting method is? Any major goals you're saving for next year? I'll reply in comments!
pear / 1565 posts
I've been using YNAB for a few years now; casually at first but finally decided I really need to utilize it to the max. I use it along with a manual spreadsheet I up-keep. It's been amazing; I'd say I budget b/c I love that stuff, but def also out of necessity as we don't make that much, live in a HCOL area, about to have #3, childcare costs up the roof, etc.
The only reason next year is not looking too scary is b/c of budgeting! I am half-way to saving our deductible for next year that I'll need by Feb for my birth; just passed halfway to saving my income for 12 weeks for maternity leave (and this is super conservative as I will get paid 60% of my weekly wages). So hopefully the "extra" income will help!
I don't know if I can afford to really have goals given next year is just survival after maternity leave and LO3 starting daycare which bumps me back up to having 2 in daycare! My original financial goals before I got pregnant with #3 is to start saving for college for the girls, and to bump my 401K contribution back up.
cherry / 150 posts
We've been using Goodbudget for a few years and I love it. Before that it was excel but it was quickly become too cumbersome. I researched a bunch of different sites/apps before DS2 was born to figure out what would make it easier for us. Goodbudget won, hands down.
We just found out we need a new roof very soon, so that's top of the list right now. Budgeting helped us survive as very poor newlyweds. Now with two kids and twice the income we had before I'm glad we learned good habits when we had very little.
nectarine / 2400 posts
I’m also using YNAB but would love to switch to something without a subscription. I used to do it by hand but that is a lot of work and I’m not sure what is the best way anymore. I have 8 payments left on my student loan (hallelujah) and after that we do have some debt to pay off but I’d also like to save and take a vacation! Plus money in the bank makes me feel secure so I’d like to up our savings
pear / 1565 posts
@gotkimchi: I was using Mint before YNAB but I am just sooo reliant on YNAB now, I can never leave hah!
pear / 1565 posts
@ilovepie: Yesss I wish I started seriously budgeting way earlier! It's something I def want to teach my kids to do asap!
pear / 1718 posts
My goal for January is to make a baseline personal budgeted income statement and balance sheet. Nerd alert. I want to have a better idea of what our living expenses are for a year.
nectarine / 2400 posts
Does anyone have any money saving or budgeting tips? I just signed up for a childcare fsa for 2020 so we’ll see how that goes
pear / 1565 posts
@gotkimchi: That would def help! I wish my employer offered that! They also don't offer HSA
My budgeting tip is literally just to drill down as DETAILED as possible so that no possible expense goes unnoticed. And I start sinking funds for everything under the sun so I feel more prepared...
nectarine / 2400 posts
@graceandjoy: ok we used to have sinking funds but that with the kids and daycare and bills we had to use all our money for that! Really looking forward to paying off my student loan and saving again
pear / 1565 posts
@gotkimchi: I think what used to make me mad is all the "unexpected" expenses that would come up and derail my plans. Like oh crap the book fair! Oh I didn't remember I had to get gifts for so many teachers! Ah I forgot car registration AND inspection is due this month, etc
cherry / 150 posts
@SweetCaroline: woah what is that?
I'm a goodbudget enthusiast because of the analytic tools. If I want to know how much I spent on oil last year, it's really easy to check.
I recently write down a baseline emergency budget to check if our savings lined up with what we would need for several months of dh being out of work in an emergency scenario.
cherry / 150 posts
@gotkimchi: having bigger goals helps me save money. Then I think twice about spending frivolously because I'd rather save for the dishwasher I want.
Also trying to make things instead of buying them. Being a Sahm helps with that one too.
pear / 1718 posts
@ilovepie: We don't budget in a detailed manner. We live pretty significantly below our means, so just go by feel and draw back on discretionary spend when we have unexpected expenses. I'm a CPA, so really interested in mapping out annual financial statements to see that we spend X on utilities, X on groceries, etc. However, I'm going to do it from a very high level to get an idea of what our baseline year looks like to see how many months we could operate off our emergency savings.
coconut / 8079 posts
We have been using YNAB for years and love it. I should say DH uses it, because I’m not numbers minded at all. His favorite thing lately is the “age of money” feature.
@graceandjoy: We have a “stuff I will forget” category for things that come up like book fair etc and DH tries to set money aside ahead of time for the yearly or twice yearly car and life insurance, but sometimes we forget!
pear / 1718 posts
@gotkimchi: Depends on your personality, but for DH and I, making an amortization schedule has been very helpful in the past. You can Google how to map out an amortization schedule for your student loans, based on your balance, monthly payment and interest rate. Then you can play out different scenarios like..."What if I paid $100 extra a month?" Then you can visually see how a sacrifice now will save you interest and how much quicker the debt is paid off. I found that quite motivating and have done it for vehicle purchases and mortgage in the past.
I realize I'm not addressing where the theoretical $100 would come from, but at least wanted to share the tool I've had succcess with as a motivator!
nectarine / 2400 posts
@SweetCaroline: ok I’ve totally done this and everything we have is low interest so it’s not that motivating lol! But I want to free up some monthly money so as soon as my student loan is paid off I’m going to see if we have any low hanging fruit we can attack
grapefruit / 4361 posts
I use Mint to keep track and at the end of the month I enter all the data into our Excel spreadsheet. Each year, I draft the spreadsheet with all of our projected income and expenses to see how much "margin" we will have to devote to our big goals. Sadly, our margin has gotten smaller and smaller, especially this year due to childcare costs doubling. Our goals for this year are to get our emergency fund back up and pay for summer travel to see family.
My spreadsheet has columns across the top for all the months, and then the rows are organized like this:
Rollover from previous month
Total Income
Tithe
Total Expenses
Net Left (which then gets divided into the two next categories)
Goal Money
Rollover to Next Month
----------------------------------
Fixed Expenses:
Mortgage
Childcare
Student Loans
Car Payments
Auto Insurance
Union dues
Internet Access
Cell phones
Life Insurance
Nytimes & Dropbox
--------------------------------------------
Changing Monthly Expenses:
Travel
Personal Care (groceries, etc)
Electric & Solar
Kids Supplies
Eating Out
Gasoline
Water
Entertainment
Shopping
Furnishings / Home Improve
Pool
-------------------------------------------
Irregular Expenses:
Gifts & Charity
School Supplies
Amazon
Shipping/Mail
Gift Cards
10th anniversary savings
Christmas savings
Haircuts
Auto repairs / tests & regis.
Misc
pear / 1718 posts
@gotkimchi: i hear ya! They were most motivating when we were paying off our mortgage, because regardless of the favorable interest rate, it was exciting for us to see how it closed the gap and tooks years off.
It is awesome to free up monthly payments and decise what to do with the free cash next!
cherry / 150 posts
@SweetCaroline: thanks for the explanation. I guess I did the same thing, just from the opposite direction. It was comforting to know that our emergency savings easily matches our minimum budget.
pear / 1521 posts
I recently realized that I’ve had the same budget spreadsheet for 10 years! So yes I like to budget I signed up for YNAB with the free trial recently but I couldn’t get into it. I think I essentially use the same concept with our budget which is that pretty much every dollar goes some place each month, with the extra to going to different savings. We aren’t that great at sticking to the budget for discretionary spending, we put everything on credit cards that we pay off at the end of each month and so I just have an overall budget for Credit. Cards. It seems like we always go a bit over my budgeted amount but it works out in the end since there’s a bit of a buffer. I’ve also tried to do sinking funds (though I just learned that term from this thread!) but it doesn’t work for me for some reason.
My current goals are to try to figure out if we’re really doing what we need to for retirement. I have a very good pension but I worry if something were to happen to me and I would also like my DH to be able to retire (early) when I do, but he started saving for retirement relatively late. We max out our Roth IRAs, he puts into his 401k to get his match but the fees are too high to make sense putting in more than that (I think). So trying to determine where to put any additional amount we’ll be able to save once we have only one in daycare (and even if we really need to up it? I’m sure we do) next year.
GOLD / eggplant / 11517 posts
Love budgetingggg! We moved across the country and went from 2 incomes to 1, so budgeting has been a new adventure lately. We've been faithful YNAB users since 2014.
nectarine / 2400 posts
@petitenoisette: ok this is where I’m struggling with ynab. We also only use a credit card and my husband is terrible about discretionary spending and also if I budget x for groceries but am at the limit it’s not like I don’t buy groceries. I like the idea of just having credit card category
cherry / 150 posts
@gotkimchi: in goodbudget you can account for credit cards and bank accounts and actually reconcile them while using them. Each month when I fill "envelopes" I decide whether to have deficits roll over or fill the gap. Then whatever is left I allocate into various savings funds. I guess it could be automatic but I like to flexibility of doing it and tracking it.
persimmon / 1281 posts
I’ve always been a huge budget-er. Now a single mom I need to buckle down and figure this out again! I use a manual spreadsheet to track but am considering using an app now that I’m the only one I have to keep track of!!
pear / 1565 posts
@jhd: Yeah I have a checking cushion, though for smaller things I'll usually steal from another category.
@petitenoisette: There is def a learning curve with YNAB. I also wasn't really getting as much out of it at first, but I bit the bullet and really watched a lot of the tutorials, read their blog posts, and also browsed the YNAB Reddit threads a ton and now I would say for me personally, it's 100% worth using.
@gotkimchi: I'm pretty much only credit card spending as well and I also don't do the grocery shopping! It took a while for DH to slowly get used to it, but he basically has a limit on his discretionary spending (aka his creditcard). I was like how hard it is to just watch what your monthly bill is. And for grocery budget, I would LOVE to bring it down and we're working on that, but for now I basically just tell him if we're close to being done for the month and he has to make do with what we have
kiwi / 617 posts
Sorry to thread highjack but @Portboston: how are things going? Sounds like you are officially separated?
nectarine / 2400 posts
How does everyone feel about paying off debt? Pay it off early? Just make the payments if it’s low interest? This is something I’ve been really thinking about since I’d like to save more and take a vacation!
pear / 1565 posts
@DillonLion: I think I started around the same time as you since I had DD1 in 2014 and that was probably when I realized I need to turbo boost my budgeting haha
@gotkimchi: So I follow The Budget Mom on IG and I think she said that you make the minimum payments, but then you work on your budget to free up extra income so whatever that's saved you can throw it at the highest interest debt.
grapefruit / 4361 posts
@gotkimchi: it depends on what your financial goals are.
For the first 5 years of our marriage, we focused on debt repayment, because we had 80-85K of student loan debt, average APR 6-7%. That's not low interest to me, especially at that amount of principal. So we lived really frugally and spent 25% of our take-home $$ on debt repayment. We got the balance down under 30-40K quickly, but then had kids.
Now that we have kids (plus unpaid maternity leaves, big medical bills, etc), AND that our student debt is at a more manageable level (17K at 6%), our financial goals have shifted. We recently saved up and paid cash for 19K worth of backyard improvements, and that's 4-5 months of take-home income for us - so, it was a big deal.
We still have 17K of loans but paying off now vs. paying the standard repayment only saves us 3K in interest so that's not motivating to me. This is, again, because we already were in "debt repayment" mode for 5-6 solid years. There are loan calculators online that would help you figure out how much you'd save in interest if you paid off debt early vs. standard plans.
grapefruit / 4361 posts
@gotkimchi:
DH & I regularly sit down and write out our financial goals, sort them in order, and set a target year for completion. It looks like this. Maybe that would be a good conversation to have? But, keeping in mind that goals can't be met without a plan The purple means the goal is complete, and the rest of the colors indicate year.
An ongoing goal is to have our emergency fund at about 3-6 months of expenses, but that keeps getting used, and then we have to build it back up.
This is another model of how to decide on goals: https://www.daveramsey.com/dave-ramsey-7-baby-steps
nectarine / 2400 posts
@DesertDreams88: we’re in a similar spot where before kids I threw a lot of money at debt but now with kids and bills we don’t have much left over. My student loan has 8 payments left and after that I think I’m going to save that money v send it to other debt. Just to have a little breathing room.
grapefruit / 4361 posts
@gotkimchi: woohoo, 8 payments! That would be so exciting and motivating!
cantaloupe / 6086 posts
@gotkimchi: we had a lot of grad school debt between us. When we graduated we got some floating interest rates and some fixed that were near 3%. Then interest rates fell keeping the floating ones low (below 4%) as well which helped. I did pay extra when I could pre getting married - but then dh was laid off a long time, then we had kids and childcare and then I started staying home so we went back to making the payments for all that time. We try to avoid debt when we can but also have a mortgage where we just make payments. Right now no car payments and saving cash every month since we probably both need new (to us) cars in the next 3 years or so.
Recently though we decided to plow some savings into paying off the two larger amounts of the four left. It felt AMAZING and now we’re snowballing those payments into the last two so they’ll be done in a year or so. Then that money will probably all go into 529s for the kids which we have done very little with so far. So that was the motivator, to get moving on those. We have spent a ton on healthcare the last few years and could never prioritize them it seemed like.
cantaloupe / 6086 posts
@gotkimchi: jealous of your 8 payments left, that’s amazing! It just seems like they drag on forevvvvvvver. I can understand wanting a break!
nectarine / 2400 posts
@bhbee: we have had a lot of medical payments too, husband needed wisdom teeth out, both kids had ear tubes, one had adenoid removed, so many appointments, dental work etc. its just life I guess but it has felt hard to make any traction and I do think a break sounds nice! We also have some money in savings and I am considering pay some stuff off when those balances equal each other.
cantaloupe / 6086 posts
@gotkimchi: that sounds like a good plan! I pushed to get my daughter’s ear tubes done this month to save us $4k (vs January) and I am thinking we need a decent vacation this year too
pear / 1565 posts
Soo I'm almost 35 weeks pregnant with my 3rd and all the nesting has been doing so much damage to my budget! Plus baby #3 is our 1st boy and we also have nothing and no shower, so I've been getting my huge registry order ready to check out and lately it's just $$$ flying out everywhere I budgeted for baby stuff, but wasn't super prepared for how crazy I went about re-organizing my house again haha!
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