Hellobee Boards

We've had one account for a while. I use to balance the check book in the beginning but it got to be too much. Right now I keep a Google calendar of all our bills - how much is due and when. Our paychecks are also on it. Any time we get a raise or bonus, it goes to savings. So if, for example, my paycheck was $1,000 biweekly and I got a raise to $1,250 - I would have the extra $250 per paycheck automatically transferred into savings. On occasion, we touch savings - particularly since we bought last year. But, for the most part, it just sits there. We have similar spending habits so there's no issue there.

@DillonLion: Understandable :). What we did to get around that is to go over the credit card spending once a week. We have a weekly ritual of Sunday breakfasts at Panera, so while there we'd look at the expenses and see if we were on track for where spending should be. If that stopped working for us I'd go to the "allowance" model and use a cash system.

@DillonLion: using debt properly is a good way to improve your credit. But my point is less about the importance of using credit cards specifically and more about learning to have control and spend responsibly. I just think that if your ability to stick to a budget has to come from outside control (ie putting cash into different labeled envelopes and once it's gone you can't spend any more, which someone told me is part of the Dave Ramsey program) then you really aren't there yet in terms of financial success. You need to learn to make the decision yourself to properly allocate funds between spending and saving.