How do you track your spending? Do you review it daily? Monthly? Do you use accounting software? DH seriously stinks with money, so I'm in charge, but I don't think I'm very good at it either. I get overwhelmed and messy and really need a system to keep tabs -- especially right now when we're trying to save for several things, plus have some extra expenses due to moving into a new house. AND our income has changed due to me working a new job. I need help to make this work.
What do you do?
Re: How do you manage your budget?
We use Quicken, and track our spending about every week. Its super easy to use and you can categorize each expense, so at the end of the month I can look at a pie chart. I love charts:) It easily shows me how much we spent on gas, groceries, etc etc. I like the calendar so I can project how much we'll have next month. Quicken also has some investment features but I don't really use that portion.
Mint.com is popular on the MM board, no experience with that one though.
I use Excel. There is a tab for each month with the fixed expenses for that month plus anything additional that we know will be required.
Anything additional is the "leftover" and that is for anything not included in the fixed expenses such as unplanned expenses, shopping, etc.
I am trying to get a better handle on it myself. I use Excel to track everything. I have a spreadsheet for all of our monthly fixed expenses (mortgage, car, utilities, child care, etc) and then a spreadsheet for all of our purchases. I have the purchases spreadsheet split into categories (gas, groceries, eating out, gifts, personal care, house stuff, clothes, etc). I have a set "budget" for each category and have that listed on the spreadsheet as well.
This may not be very money savy, but we charge everything (that is not a fixed expense/bill) and then pay it off in full (so we never pay interest and get points/cash back). So it is really easy for me to just enter my charge receipts into my spreadsheet and keep track of my spending in each category for the month. It also shows me where we need to cut back (eating out!!).
This systems works really well for me, we are pretty much meeting our financial goals in terms of savings, etc. I would like to tighten up our food spending as I stated in my other post and tracking my spending this way really helps see where the money is going.
Good luck!
My Sweet Girls
This. I used to use Microsoft Money, and really liked it. But when Truliant came out with their program I switched to it because it was all already there. I have also tried Mint.com, but it was alot of work keeping everything updated and I was always falling behind.
We use a spreadsheet and figuratively "spend" our money at the beginning of the month. That way, we know where every penny is going. My DH looks at the spreadsheet all the time, but it's not really something you have to keep track of everyday..just every month.
We also take cash out of the bank at the beginning of each month and we stop spending when we run out of cash. You can't spend what you don't have. Sometimes that sucks b/c I'll get mad at myself b/c I'm almost out of "fun" money in the middle of the month, but that's what being on a budget is all about. Sucks, but it helps you save which is SO worth it. For the cash system, we have an envelope for all of our budget categories: "fun" (which for us is eating out, shopping etc...nothing we need really), "groceries", "misc" (unexpected expense b/c you can't plan for everything), and there's more....but hopefully you get the picture.