Sticking to a Budget, How it Happened to Me - Part 1

To my amazement, we've been sticking to our budget for about a year and a half. After nearly seven years of many failed attempts and likely tens of thousands of dollars wasted on junk (thankfully I haven't kept count), I found a system that works for me (I say me not us because Shane doesn't care to deal with the money, which is just as well considering I'm a control freak and ex-accountant). I know there are tons of more qualified financial geeks out there, but I do believe that the only way to get your financial act together is to keep trying to find the right system for you. So, I thought I'd share in case I actually have a good idea.

A few years ago, I thought it would be better to simplify things and use something I had complete control over. So I created this Excel spreadsheet to keep track of our monthly budgets. I've been using it for a while so it makes total sense to me, but I can understand how it might look like a mass of confusion to everyone else. I'll be explaining how it works in later posts.



In this file there are several tabs. "Example", which is an example of what a budget sheet would look like at the *end* of the month. "Template", which is the template I use when ever I need to re-do our budget completely (like when I stopped working). And then there are 12 other tabs for each month of the year.

I used this method for a couple of months and while I liked it better than using a software program, we still weren't sticking to our budget. There always seemed to be something unplanned that would blow the budget to bits. Sometimes it was a household repair or getting the car fixed or Shane would realize that all his socks had holes and all his shirts were stained.

So, we did a couple things. I'll just talk about the two major things so I don't end up writing a book. First, we consolidated all our money into one place. We had our checking account, mutual fund, and three IRAs. All with different companies. This makes it really difficult to get a handle on how much money you really have. So I called around to find a new home for our money. I called four companies and Charles Schwab was the only place interested in helping us "poor" folk who didn't have $250,000.

After we transferred all of our money over there, we each got our own checking accounts and credit cards. Now, here is where I could write a book. This is where things *really* turned around for us. We have the paychecks go to our family checking and an allowance of $200 a month go to our personal checking account. If we want to buy anything that is for our own use or gifts for each other and non-mutual friends, we have to use our own money. I'm talking books, clothes, shoes, and hobby stuffs. It's tough to stick to only $200 a month in personal spending money, but totally worth it at the end of the month when we actually have money to save.

For the sake of boring the pants off you this discussion is to be continued...