Ok, you 13r's. Budgeting is not my strong suit. I have always said, "How do you budget when we don't even have any money??"
Since our 13 started 2 years ago, we have struggled with this. We have used pencil/paper and old school cash with envelopes. Then we switched to mint.com and that was nice, but didn't really help anymore than what we were doing and I ended up going back to the cash/envelopes. We seemed to be missing out on tracking about 20% of our money and it was always put into the "misc" category. Some bills were paid online and automatically deducted and we were always hit with a "Oh crap, the ___ cleared today, did we overdraw??!!"
Then, we found a trial for the you need a budget software and decided to try it for free for a week. I was amazed at the discrepencies it found and we were able to afford the $60 to purchase the full version. Since then, we have been able to save over $500 a month by using it. We were able to replace 4 tires ($700) and not kill ourselves.
The basic premise is that your bills are all paid for during the current month by last month's income. Sounds pretty easy, but we were living paycheck to paycheck-literally! With this program, Every dollar gets assigned a destination BEFORE you even get it. We did Dave Ramsey's money makeoever (which I loved) but we kept needing our $1000 emergency fund as soon as we would get it. This is so real and hands on and so doable!
It took us 3 months to have enough income for the next month expenses. But now, we have a month's worth of wiggle room and it feels great! I love looking at it everyday and seeing how much we are saving. I can actually see that our savings is growing!!
Who knew we could spend so much on food, until I discovered most of Costco purchases (grouped under food) were for basic needs like toilet paper, etc.
I'm not into advertising for ANYONE but I wanted to share this because I wish I would have had this when we first started our 13. Going through the BK is hard enough.
Since our 13 started 2 years ago, we have struggled with this. We have used pencil/paper and old school cash with envelopes. Then we switched to mint.com and that was nice, but didn't really help anymore than what we were doing and I ended up going back to the cash/envelopes. We seemed to be missing out on tracking about 20% of our money and it was always put into the "misc" category. Some bills were paid online and automatically deducted and we were always hit with a "Oh crap, the ___ cleared today, did we overdraw??!!"
Then, we found a trial for the you need a budget software and decided to try it for free for a week. I was amazed at the discrepencies it found and we were able to afford the $60 to purchase the full version. Since then, we have been able to save over $500 a month by using it. We were able to replace 4 tires ($700) and not kill ourselves.
The basic premise is that your bills are all paid for during the current month by last month's income. Sounds pretty easy, but we were living paycheck to paycheck-literally! With this program, Every dollar gets assigned a destination BEFORE you even get it. We did Dave Ramsey's money makeoever (which I loved) but we kept needing our $1000 emergency fund as soon as we would get it. This is so real and hands on and so doable!
It took us 3 months to have enough income for the next month expenses. But now, we have a month's worth of wiggle room and it feels great! I love looking at it everyday and seeing how much we are saving. I can actually see that our savings is growing!!
Who knew we could spend so much on food, until I discovered most of Costco purchases (grouped under food) were for basic needs like toilet paper, etc.
I'm not into advertising for ANYONE but I wanted to share this because I wish I would have had this when we first started our 13. Going through the BK is hard enough.
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