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What I did befoe I made a budget for us was I made a "money tracker" spreadsheet in Excel. I put every category I could think of across the top (groceries and dining out were separate, rent, utilites, phone, internet, gas, etc) and then every day I would enter how much we spent in each category. After a month or two I really had a good idea of where our money was going, and it gave me a starting point for a budget. I mean, how can you make a budget if you have no idea how much you actually spend on certain things every month?
After about 2-3 months, I took all the info in my money tracker and turned it into an actual budget. It was rediculous how much we were spending on eating out! Him eating lunch out nearly every day was $200 a month just by itself! Whoa!
I would recommend Mint.com. You could do basically the same thing as what Miss Snowflake said, but using mint.com. It'll track and categorize it for you, I just log in twice a week to make sure it categorized correctly. And helps you see what you've already paid this month, and what is still left to pay.
I love love love Quicken! If you don't want to pay for a system though, you can use Mint.com which is now owned by Quicken. It helps to keep track of all your accounts, balances, bills, etc. If you have any questions about it, feel free to PM me!
To begin when we combined our finances- we only spent "essential money" to see how frugal we could be. we packed all our lunches, didnt buy new clothes etc. it let us put the money we saved into a cushion and it really helped when we started wedding saving.
We're still working on this, but you might consider reading a book specifically for couples, like "Smart Couples Finish Rich." You can get ideas about what money issues to discuss and how to organize things.
@VeronicaH: Thanks, I'll have to look into that book, I have never heard of it.
We have a rough budget but the problem is we have to keep separate accounts because he owns a business. So we have three accounts we have to figure out how to transfer and track money across.
@cazos - Mint.com could work really well for you then. If you can access your accounts online then you can add them to one Mint account. For example, I have my personal checking, joint checking, savings for each of those, renters checking, online savings, mortgage account, credit card and an investment account on mine. (That's 4 banks!) In order to keep track of purchases I only have to log into one place. It makes things managable. There's no way I could juggle all of those accounts without Mint!
Is it safe to link your accounts to a website like mint.com? I trust that my banks site is secure, but how do I know they will keep my account info safe?
It is a scary idea, I've had the same thought but here's what Mint has to say about it: http://www.mint.com/features/security/
Ok, so I logged on. Its an interesting site. I could see how it could be helpful. Here is something maybe I am doing wrong though because the system doesn't seem to have a feature for this.
We have three main accounts, his, mine, and ours. Obviously I can add all three easily to mint.com. Is there a way to keep three seperate budgets though? This is what I was really getting frustrated at. I am actually really just concerned about mine and ours, he doesn't have that much discretionary money and he can do with that as he pleases. Its really hard to not only plan out two budgets, but also keep track of them monthly.
Am I being silly and too nit-picky? Is there a way to have each account linked to a seperate budget?
Oh, I see what you mean. Hmmm... I don't know of a way to make mint do that unless you set up two separate accounts for it. At that point you might be better off buying something like Quicken but I'm really not all that familiar with it. Maybe @MissAsB: could chime back in?
You can't set up separate budgets, it would be just one budget in mint.com. But here's an idea, and I don't know if it would work for you.
You can set up your own sub-categories in mint so you could do something like this...
Rent/Mortgage $xxx
Utilities $xxx
etc...for all your combined bills.
Then under appropriate categories you could do this...
For example, shopping is a category - make your own subcategory that is called "Caszos Shopping" and mark all the transactions as that. Then you could have "Mr. Caszos' Shopping" as another sub-category. Would that solve the problem of having separate budgets within one budget?
Kericita - Yea that works, but it only tells me the total at the end, "you have spent xxx out of xxxx" and I don't really want that lumped together.
I think the closests thing I think would be to sign up for two accounts.
I may just stick to my good ole excel spreadsheet.
Ah, ya I forgot you can only do a budget off a category, not off of a subcategory (which maybe they would add that in the future). Yea sounds like excel would work best then.
The only other thing you can do in mint is have that overall budget and then you can look at pie charts and stuff to see if you are within your part of the budget, or he is within his part. But excel might just be easier at that point I think.
I might be late on this, but what has worked well for my husband and I is a seperate household account.
I keep track of the finances because this is how I did my financing before marriage/joint accounts.
I have written down everything that is due every single month and the day it is due. Every month I transfer money to the bill pay account, and pay our bills out of that account. Then we direct deposit money into our savings account every paycheck. So basically our joint checking is for gas, dinner, going out, shopping. This has been so helpful for me since my husband makes so many debit card purchases.
I work at a bank, so maybe this is easier for me to keep track of, but this is the only way ill ever do our finances.
@studentbride: This is how I am hoping to do things as well. I really want to still keep seperate accounts and then have a joint checking/savings for the day to day stuff and big joint purchases.
Its just hard to figure out and keep track of so many accounts. I have my salary direct deposited to my checking. From there I put some into my checking and some into the joint checking. From there more bills are paid out of both of those accounts.
I use mint for my own budgeting, but it's going to be tough to bring my husband into that. I tried to bring up making a budget this weekend but he wanted to focus on schoolwork and purging the house. Maybe next weekend.
I also want to start saving like gangbusters but husband isn't ready for that yet either. He wants to splurge a little on a new laptop and I want a netbook, but maybe he'll let us start the savings after that. We're hoping to live off one salary and save his. And maybe he'll finish negotiating said salary this week. Let's hope.
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I am trying so hard to figure out our finances now that we are married. It is so hard to figure out this wedding expenses that need to be paid off, paying all the bills that got lost in the stack of mail while we were gone for 2 weeks at the wedding, and getting on a "normal" married budget.
Any good suggestions about how to do all this? Hopefully by the end of July we will have a lot of the "unexpected" stuff out of the way. We are also going to work on using the Dave Ramsey "envelope" system. We'll see how good that works.