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NBR: How do you budget?
Dh has been handling the money since we were married since that's how he was brought up- the man handles the money/bills.
However, I don't agree with a lot of things. We have NO savings. Zip,zilch,nada. We live paycheck to paycheck(barely) and I KNOW we waste too much money on eating out and extra things. I HATE not having a savings, and we are behind on a CC bill. 
How do you budget your families money? I am a SAHM so we don't have "separate" money.
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Re: NBR: How do you budget?
Hey! ?The Money Matters board on The Nest is pretty good with these questions--but they are REALLY into it, so it might be a bit of overkill, too.
Personally, we have really liked the system Dave Ramsey has---you can find it online! ?He has budget planners online, and gives guides of how much of your income to spend on what things. ?We also are doing his system for getting out of debt: ?put $1000 in savings FIRST, for emergencies so you don't get into more debt while trying to get out of debt. ?Then pay off each debt, smallest to largest. ?Then build savings of 3-6 months of living expenses. ?(This might take awhile!!) ?We started a few months ago, and have paid off our two smallest debts so far. ?The $1000 in savings has really come in handy--whenever we run low in our checking acct, we have something to cushion without going into more debt. ?Then the next paycheck, we replenish the $1000 before we pay extra towards debt so the cycle doesn't start over.
Well, good luck! ?It feels great to have a plan, and I really like that we do it together---I would HATE not having any say in the money-managing!?
We just spent time revamping our budget because I'm now a SAHM so we needed to look closely at our spending!
Tips:
Eat at home! This is someone we are really working on. It's SO much cheaper and so much better for you. It's hard to find the time to cook sometimes (especially with a LO), but I find menu planning very helpful. Keeping food costs low is something that we've found is WELL within our control.
Pay yourself first! Obviously you don't have a lot of extra money laying around (neither do we!), but it's SO beneficial for you to even put a small amount of money into a savings account. We have $25/week automatically transferred from our checking to a savings account that we don't touch unless of emergency or something that we both agree we should use it on. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up. Even if you can only do $10/week it's worth it to have peace of mind that you at least have a small cushion. You have to start somewhere!
Also, depending on your personal circumstances you may need to make some additional lifestyle choices. Look at all of your extras (cable, cell phone, gym membership, etc.) and see if you can cut costs anywhere either by eliminating things, or stepping down to cheaper plans.
Something else I'm a fan of (especially now that we have a baby!) is Netflix. We used to spend a decent amount of money going to the movies, which is about $20 for 2 ppl in our area just for tickets! For a little less than $14/month we get unlimited rentals with Netflix. It's a huge money saver and again, we can save money by making dinner or a pizza, etc. to eat while watching the movie at home. Not to mention, we can pause it when we need to tend to the LO.
Anyway, this is what has worked for us. I know it's not easy to cut spending, but it's way better not to have money worries especially if you can find small ways to "trim the fat". Good luck!
P.S. Have you ever checked out the Money Matters board on The Nest? The ladies there might have helpful suggestions.
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If you've ever seen the show "Till debt do us part" it really helped us!! Pick up the book called: Debt Free forever from Gail Vaz-Oxlade
On payday I got to the bank and withdrawl cash, I leave in the bank the money for our mortgage payment, and bill payments that come out. The rest I withdrawl and bring home. We have jars labeled: "Groceries, Gas, eatingout/entertainment, the kids, and then we each have our own jar. I distribute the cash in the jars..we fiqured out what we spend each month on what. The money in our own jars is our own spending money..so DH can never telll me I shop to much, and I can never tell him he wastes money..cause once it's gone it is gone! It's great for budgeting. At the next payday whatever is left in the jars we put in savings ( usually only about 80-100$ every 2 weeks), but it adds up!
We started doing this 3 years ago, and I find we never fight about money or feel like we are ever broke. You spend less money when you live off cash that's for sure! I make lists to go to the grocery store so that I don't splurge on stuff we don't need, and we only make a point to eat out once a week. If hubby wants to eat out on his own..he has to use his own jar money!
It works great for us!
I keep an excel spreadsheet. It has our monthly bills, income, budget categories and savings. We have 6 budget categories: groceries, entertainment, household, gas, baby and random. Every time we spend money I put it in a category. DH and I get a small monthly allowance. We try not to go over the budgets set and most of the time we are good about it.We also automatically set a certain amount to go into our savings each month. I figure "out of sight, out of mind". What we don't use at the end of the month I roll over into our savings. We don't get to use it next month.
A good eye opener is mint.com. It showed us a while back how much we were truly over spending. It pushed me into making my own personal budget.
Just because one person "handles the finances" doesn't mean that person gets to make all the decisions on how money is spent. It also doesn't mean that the other person should be clueless.
I handle the finances in our house, but we are in agreement on how our money is spent and what our goals are. I just do the bill paying and keep up the checkbook. Every so often we have a "financial rundown" discussion where we look at our accounts, goals and see how we are doing and adjust where necessary.
You need to sit down and create a budget that you both are comfortable with. Track every single penny you spend for a few months and see where your money is going. Then you can decide how much you can allocate to each category.
We pay ourselves first so we took our income and first allocated $x towards savings. Then determined how much we had left for everything else. It works great for us.
WHAT A GREAT IDEA!! I might try this!
Some of the PP had some excellent ideas!
What we do is use quicken deluxe, a software program that helps you organize finances, pay off debt, etc. As others have mentioned, don't use debit cards/credit cards and use cash as it's easy to spend money when it's on a card-those $1 drinks at 7-11 or lunches out REALLY add up. What you should do first is figure out how much you make, how much you owe in bills, and what you can cut back on to save more money. Set a goal of how much you want to save a month and find ways to save money.
Ways to save money-we go out to dinner with restaurant.com gift certificates which makes going out cheaper and we only go out 2xs a month, coupon, got rid of extended cable (if things are really bad, you can cut cable and watch tv on hulu.com), we went from a $120 family cell phone plan to pay as you go phones which we use for emergencies and a magic jack landline phone that only costs us $20 a year (saves us TONS of money a year), we carry no debt besides a babies r us credit card we pay off every month, when I worked we used to carpool (I had a considerable commute to work through a toll road, so this worked well at saving money for me), meal plan and when you go grocery shopping only buy what you need, cancel gym memberships and work out on your own instead, etc.
Also, I work PT and my whole check is automatically deposited into our savings account every week. You can set up how much money that you want deposited into savings a week and your account will automatically do it.