This year, we as a family are making it top priority to take control of our finances. For our company, my husband is fantastic at watching every dollar, but we have been lazy personally. The result of such a lack of purpose is similar to a train wreck. You start on the track but without a clear destination, without someone to steer or to control how much fuel is being used, you crash and burn. And it kinda sucks! We look back at the past few years and see that we are no further ahead and are having troubles doing what we truly want to with our money – getting out of debt so we can give money and time to those who need it more than we do.
- The first thing we did is use an Excel spreadsheet to insert all of our monthly costs versus our income. You can download it below. Once you have filled in as much information as you know, it will calculate if you will have a cash shortfall at the end of the month. Download Monthly BudgetTemplate
- Next we created a budget for each of the categories in the spreadsheet in Mint.com. We use this free online service to track every dollar that goes through our accounts and credit card. It downloads all of your financial information from your online banking. The most fantastic part about Mint is that I can use it wherever I am online plus with their iPhone and iPad app.
- Now, to watch the money flow and to ensure that our expenses stay within budget or to see if some tweaking needs to happen, I login in to Mint multiple times during the week. I look at every transaction that has occurred and categorize it to the matching budget. If a transaction applies to more than one budget, split the transaction. For example, I go to Costco and part of my purchase is food but I have also bought a gift. 2 budgets, make into 2 transactions.
Other little things I am trying to keep my eyes on the prize include:
- Planned shopping days where I have previewed my purchases online and looked for coupons ahead instead of impulse buying (including grocery shopping).
- Meal planning for the entire month using Evernote. This helps me to plan out what I need to purchase for groceries well ahead of time, making shopping on cheap Tuesday and with coupons simple. Also prevents more impulse buying.
- Automatic giving and savings. We have it set up to automatically remove funds from our chequing that we purposefully want to give to our church, charities and for specific savings.
- Keep myself occupied with free or cheap things like outdoor activities, maintaining our household, helping others, and getting to know people.
How do you watch where your money is going? Do you have a great money goal you want to share? How about a fantastic tip?
Kristen
February 8, 2012 at 12:20 pmIf your planning ahead with coupons, check out Frugal Edmonton Mama. She actually matches coupons with the sales that are on during the week.
Lisa
February 8, 2012 at 10:36 pmThanks Kristen. Just in case anyone needs the website for that, it is http://www.frugaledmontonmama.com/
Cindy
February 8, 2012 at 7:44 pmIf this spreadsheet and software works for both of you (I see you only mention how you are going to be utilizing it), then that is great, but ….. this may be difficult to maintain. I agree wholeheartedly with the planning for groceries. I am wondering if you could expand that with going out for movies, supper, coffee?
Lisa
February 8, 2012 at 8:12 pmOh Cindy, that is why from there you use mint.com. It will track everything for you if you input the info from the spreadsheet. It tracks if you are under or over in each budget, including coffee and entertainment. If you set it up once, it is minimal to maintain.
Cindy
February 8, 2012 at 9:20 pmminimal is good!
Linda
February 9, 2012 at 8:29 amYou go girl! The advantage you have is time. The number one bit of advice I can tell you is to make retirement planning a priority when you’re young. I’d love to see your meal planning for a month. We’re trying to eat at home more and have started Friday evening as breakfast night. Where we might have gone to a restaurant in the past we now make omelettes & hashbrowns or toast. More economical and we look forward to it.
Auntie Linda
Faye
February 9, 2012 at 10:57 amHey Lisa! Great post!
One of the more challenging parts of being newly married was trying to figure out fincances! We decided to do something similar.
At first we were just going to do this for one month, but decided to keep going. We record all of our purchases throughout the month on an Excel spreadsheet. Then we total it up, and compare that with how much we earned. Once we have the total income, we set aside the money for charitable, tithing, etc. Then we subtract our expenses from our income. That ‘profit’ gets put into our savings account, but is also recorded on another spreadsheet. We have decided on projects we want to use/save the money for and gave each category a percentage. For example, “Renovating the kitchen” might get 15% of our ‘profit’ for the month. “Paying off debt” gets 20%. We have “Savings for the Future”, “Travel”, etc in there too. It’s great because even if we aren’t making a lot of money, we can still see those amounts slowly growing. We are saving for something that we want to do in the future.
It also keeps us both accountable. We still feel like we can shop for ourselves, even impulse buy every once in a while, but knowing that we need to show the other person, makes us more aware of when and how we are spending money.
Lisa
February 23, 2012 at 3:34 pmFaye,
I’m going to try and do a quick video on how mint.com works. It might save you time by putting everything in your categories for you and then you can see at the end what you have left to disperse. I really like the idea of having a plan for the money leftover at the end of the month.