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@Rainbow Sprinkles: I've been keeping a spreadsheet of our expenses for years now. I would go through all of our bank transactions once or twice a month and update the spreadsheet so I know exactly how much we spent. Then, I can get an average of what we spend or decide how much we need to cut back.
If you're interested, Gold post your email on my wall and I'll email it to you.
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This might sound cheesy, but I feel like our loves got so much easier when we created our budget. It was like night and day. Our stress level went down so much.
We use an excel spread sheet. My DH set all the formulas because I have no clue how to use Excel. We have 20 categories, we budget for everything. These are the ones I can remember off the top of my head: Bills, Gas, Groceries, Mortgage, Car Insurance, Dining Out, Date Night, DH allowance, My allowance, Pets, Travel, Car Maintenance, Birthdays, Christmas, Retirement Savings, Miscellaneous, Medical.
We started by taking DH's bring home pay and subtracting $100. We did that so we would always have extra to put over into savings. Then we looked at our bank statements to figure out what we needed to live off of (bills, gas, groceries, etc) on a monthly basis. We divided that by 2 since he is paid twice a month. Once we took care of the necessities we divided the rest and put it in the "fun" categories (allowances, Christmas, birthdays).
Anything extra (like overtime) goes into the miscellaneous category and we transfer savings from there. If once of us receives monetary gifts for our birthdays or Christmas then those go into our allowance categories.
I feel like I'm not doing a good job explaining how it works. It's easier to understand if you can see it. I have a sample budget that I can email to you if you'd like.
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