Comments on: Getting Real With Your Finances

By: Kristi

Kristi — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:19:47 +0000

AngryJulie sent me over here, what a great post! I did a post on Mint last year and I was just about to post about them again next week as I’m revisiting it right now. Your advice is spot on. Love it!

By: Maria

Maria — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:44:13 +0000

So I want to try mint.com but my husband usually takes money out of the bank and uses cash for all of his purchases. I tried to get him on board for one month. Every day I hounded him for what he spent that day (it got really annoying even to me) and by the end of the month we found out he spent around $800 for food/drinks/misc. So if I used mint.com would I have to be hounding him again for what he spent his cash on?

By: Shelley

Shelley — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:21:07 +0000

DAVE RAMSEY TOTAL MONEY MAKEOVER!!!!!! This book is really inspirational and the steps really work. We have managed to pay off almost $20,000 in debt within the last year with our same salaries. Don’t spend more then you make and stick to your budgets!!

By: Shannon

Shannon — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:55:23 +0000

Julie,

You cannot budget your addictions.

By: Julie {Angry Julie Monday}

Julie {Angry Julie Monday} — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:23:54 +0000

Is there a way to budget my Monsters, Dr. Peppers, and Etsy purchases?

By: Crystal

Crystal — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 04:27:22 +0000

This is a great post. I use mint.com and I LOVE it!

By: Becky

Becky — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:02:07 +0000

Your comment about people spending X + 20% is true. My son asked me the other day how much money we spend on things. We are not the average American family, so I decided to put it in perspective by comparing what we spend to what the average family (usually 4, although we are 5) spends. We came up with about $3,200 originally and about $6,000 for the average family. After thinking about it though, we figured we should add another $400-600 for things we did not take into account.

Our main savings are now in insurance (used to be $800/month, now $200 w/ high deductable), we don’t have cable ($0), I don’t own a cell phone and my husband has a paid company one ($0), we own all our cars ($0), and now spend $200 or less in groceries/toiletries per month. That’s a total savings of $1,500 + just in the things I listed.

I will try the free online money management system. Thanks! After we did our little excercise in what we spend on what, I wanted to find such a program. Great timing!

By: Nicole

Nicole — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 02:13:42 +0000

I am currently revamping my own method. I just opened a new checking account at my bank that I will use only for groceries and household goods. I currently use quicken and I have several different “accounts” listed but in actuality it’s ony one single real account at the bank. However I use my different subaccounts in quicken to budget for each monthly expense, mortgage, electric bill, fuel, etc. I tend to let my grocery fund go in the red which is just robbing from Peter to pay Paul. So I am hoping that by having an actual real life checking account that is only for that purpose I will be forced to watch and follow my budget more closely.
You make a great point that you have to be honest with yourself. I intention disillusion myself into thinking that it’s not that much. However I do think that as I get further into couponing I am seeing a difference in my spending.

By: Shannon

Shannon — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:04:21 +0000

Felicia,

I am not a big fan of the envelope system for tracking how much you spend on what. It is good for CONTROLLING how much you spend, but not getting a handle on what you are spending on, because if you have a “slush” fund, your really not accountable. I think as a first step you need to really know what you are spending.

By: Tabatha

Tabatha — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:51:37 +0000

I’m not one for using a computer for finances for some reason I always forget to enter it and some of those programs can get expensive month after month. So I went the old school way with pen and paper. But instead of making up my own budget I went to http://www.listplanit.com and printed their Financial Planner list for $4.95 and placed it into a binder. Once printed I put them into page protectors so that I can use a dry erase marker. This has worked wonderfully for me and my husband to keep track. Plus, we can take the binder anywhere in case we need to, unlike our desktop computer. Plus, we don’t leave our computer on all the time and this is accessible at all times.

By: Felicia

Felicia — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:48:46 +0000

Dave Ramsey has a section in his books about budgets, it really helped me. Also, the envelope system and just using cash helps me with my budget, you can’t spend what you don’t have.