My name is Deanna and I love to budget.
Weird, right?! I love to spend so how can I think budgeting is fun? Because I also happen to love a plan, and sleeping at night...
(image from www.pinterest.com)
As a single mom, I became good at budgeting out of necessity. I had to make my salary stretch until it begged for mercy. I had two of the sweetest kids in the world depending on me to keep a roof over their heads, food in their bellies and have some sort of plan for the future. They became my why. And now that I am remarried and we are a family of five, I continue to budget every. single. month.
My hope is that this post will encourage you to spend about an hour a month deciding where your money will go. Don't like the "B" word? Think of it as a spending plan. You telling every one of your hard-earned dollars where to go to best serve the needs of you and your family. I by no means have all the answers or do this perfectly. Please leave your advice on budgeting in the comments. I love finding new ways to do things!
For years, I kept my monthly budget in an Excel document. Last fall, however, I found EveryDollar, and I officially broke up with Excel.
EveryDollar is a budgeting software tool created by the Dave Ramsey team. There is a free version or you can upgrade to a Plus version for a few dollars a month. (It links to your accounts and categorizes your transactions for you). I use the free version. I simply downloaded it from the app store and created my account. I have only visited the web version a handful of times. You can download the app and sign in on multiple phones, so each person (i.e. you and your spouse) can enter spending transactions. They do not sponsor me, but I love it so much, they should!
Basically, this app helps you tell each one of your hard-earned dollars where to go. We enter our income and then our categories are giving, saving, housing, transportation, food, lifestyle, insurance and debt. There are sub-categories under each major category. For example, lifestyle includes things like childcare, Netflix, monthly spending cash...anything we spend money on that isn't included in the other areas. You set an amount for each subcategory and then enter transactions throughout the month as you spend. It keeps track of everything for you, lets you know how much you have left in each category or when you go over. The best part is that it carries the categories over from month to month and you only have to update the amounts as necessary.
This app has helped us get control over our finances better than any other tool we have used. It really helps to see where our money goes and it gives us permission to spend without worrying.
Another budgeting trick we use is a credit card with cash back rewards. We pay for absolutely everything we can with this card, pay it off at the end of the month and collect cash back. This is a great tip as long as using a credit card doesn't make you overspend.
Finally, two things that save our family so much money are Amazon Prime and Ebates. We do a lot of our shopping online. Amazon Prime saves us hundreds of dollars in shipping and Ebates mails us checks for shopping online just for going through their site first. I heart Ebates! Click below if either one of these would help your budget.
I would love to hear your budgeting tips or money saving tricks that work for your family!
**This post contains affiliate links.**
Weird, right?! I love to spend so how can I think budgeting is fun? Because I also happen to love a plan, and sleeping at night...
(image from www.pinterest.com)
As a single mom, I became good at budgeting out of necessity. I had to make my salary stretch until it begged for mercy. I had two of the sweetest kids in the world depending on me to keep a roof over their heads, food in their bellies and have some sort of plan for the future. They became my why. And now that I am remarried and we are a family of five, I continue to budget every. single. month.
My hope is that this post will encourage you to spend about an hour a month deciding where your money will go. Don't like the "B" word? Think of it as a spending plan. You telling every one of your hard-earned dollars where to go to best serve the needs of you and your family. I by no means have all the answers or do this perfectly. Please leave your advice on budgeting in the comments. I love finding new ways to do things!
For years, I kept my monthly budget in an Excel document. Last fall, however, I found EveryDollar, and I officially broke up with Excel.
EveryDollar is a budgeting software tool created by the Dave Ramsey team. There is a free version or you can upgrade to a Plus version for a few dollars a month. (It links to your accounts and categorizes your transactions for you). I use the free version. I simply downloaded it from the app store and created my account. I have only visited the web version a handful of times. You can download the app and sign in on multiple phones, so each person (i.e. you and your spouse) can enter spending transactions. They do not sponsor me, but I love it so much, they should!
Basically, this app helps you tell each one of your hard-earned dollars where to go. We enter our income and then our categories are giving, saving, housing, transportation, food, lifestyle, insurance and debt. There are sub-categories under each major category. For example, lifestyle includes things like childcare, Netflix, monthly spending cash...anything we spend money on that isn't included in the other areas. You set an amount for each subcategory and then enter transactions throughout the month as you spend. It keeps track of everything for you, lets you know how much you have left in each category or when you go over. The best part is that it carries the categories over from month to month and you only have to update the amounts as necessary.
This app has helped us get control over our finances better than any other tool we have used. It really helps to see where our money goes and it gives us permission to spend without worrying.
Another budgeting trick we use is a credit card with cash back rewards. We pay for absolutely everything we can with this card, pay it off at the end of the month and collect cash back. This is a great tip as long as using a credit card doesn't make you overspend.
Finally, two things that save our family so much money are Amazon Prime and Ebates. We do a lot of our shopping online. Amazon Prime saves us hundreds of dollars in shipping and Ebates mails us checks for shopping online just for going through their site first. I heart Ebates! Click below if either one of these would help your budget.
I would love to hear your budgeting tips or money saving tricks that work for your family!
**This post contains affiliate links.**
No comments:
Post a Comment