Comments on: Monday Monthly Mission # 19

By: natashia

natashia — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:28:00 +0000

my husband and i are actually in our third month of doing this. We save all our slips and at the end of each week we are each responsible for filling in our excel sheet. this past week i went shopping for some up-coming birthday gifts, an anniversary present and a wedding gift, and all i kept thinking was ‘i don’t want to enter these numbers into my spread sheet!’ ha ha it’s good though, it makes you think twice before you hand over the plastic

By: T

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:02:05 +0000

I use YNAB (You Need a Budget) software to track my finances. It’s awesome. You enter the amount of money you have, then you budget every penny of it. You can move amounts around throughout the month if you need to. They try to get you to living month-to-month instead of paycheck to paycheck. All of my income gets designated to next months’ budget, so I don’t need to wait until payday to pay the Internet bill that just came in. I already have that money budgeted, and the money I’m using to pay it is from the money I earned last month. They have a free book you can download on their site. It’s short and worth the read, and explains their methodology. It got us from paycheck to paycheck to living month to month.

By: Sayward

Sayward — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:00:12 +0000

Yay, I’m glad there are some people joining me on this one! So much better not to go it alone.

Oh and @ Rea, I totally agree with what @Erosan said, and Damian and I have a similar system.

@ RawJoy – That’s awesome you’re being more mindful already!

By: Sandra

Sandra — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 12:35:54 +0000

This monthly mission I am going to take head on…after my semester ends on 4/15, but I am realizing that I spend entirely too much on food! My refrigerator and freezer are almost always packed to the gills, as is my pantry. We bought a Blendtec last month, so we’ve been experimenting with that…but we’ve also found there’s a lot of foods we can easily make instead of buy thanks to it. Woo hoo we can do this!

By: RawJoy

RawJoy — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 20:33:09 +0000

Already working! As I went out to lunch, there was a book fair in my building lobby. I browsed through and, without really thinking about it, picked up a couple of CDs, figuring they’d be nice to listen to while working. Then I DID start thinking. Do I really need to blow $12 on more CDs? I barely listen to the ones I have at work now. So I put them back.

No real big deal, but it was cool that I’m already beginning to be aware of and think about how I choose to spend my money.

(However, I had no problem dropping $10 when I walked into Whole Foods and saw they had Champagne Mangos on sale 10 for $10)

By: Kelsey

Kelsey — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 17:38:44 +0000

I am definitely in. I used to be really good at keeping track of my spending, but in the past couple of years, I have made enough money that I didn’t have to worry about it too much. My boyfriend and I really want to buy a house, so we have been talking about how much we spend and trying to keep track so that we can save as much as possible for that.

By: Callie

Callie — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:40:27 +0000

It is so funny that this is the MMM this month. N and I are looking to go solar for the new house and in order to see if we can pay the upfront costs we sat down just this weekend and did a whole budgeting money round up thing. We’ve come out of it feeling good. We’ve decided to make some small changes, like putting a budget on whimsical Amazon purchases, but we’re mostly in good shape and we’re getting solar panels! Even though we can now see better where we’re sometimes careless with our cash, it’s very freeing to not have it be a big mystery. Good luck, and I hope this ends up being enjoyable!

By: RawJoy

RawJoy — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:56:24 +0000

I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, so this seems the perfect time to jump on board with payday being this week.

Right now, I get a set amount of grocery and spending money for me and DH in cash every two weeks, and the rest goes in the bank for bills and also a savings account. We have a fairly generous personal spending budget for ourselves which includes gas, lunches, toiletries, and then whatever else we want to spend or save for. That’s worked for us for the last ten years. But there’s so many times where it’s three days after I get my cash and I start wondering where $80 went??? So I’m going to track my personal spending money.

I’d kind of like to get a credit card with rewards and try to go that way instead of cash. However, I DO save my change. If something’s $9.01, I give them $10. Even if they ask for a penny. On the few times I use a vending machine, I always put the dollar in. Always give them $2 for a $1.39 cup of coffe. I throw it all in a old stone pickling crock in the bottom of my closet. It seems to average between $100-$150 every three months. So if I save it for a complete year, it can easily be $500 or so.

I’ll start tracking my cash, and look into some credit cards.

Good to have you back!

By: alison

alison — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 14:09:52 +0000

I’ve been tracking all expenses for the past few months, and it’s really helpful! This way, when the time comes when a change in spending needs to be made, I can make a quick decision because I have all the facts.

By: erosan

erosan — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:41:18 +0000

Problem with mint is it does not do International banks (at least it still won’t do Mexican banks) T_T

Gosh, I wish this MMM hadn’t come on a month I happened to decide to spend on a couple of “luxury” items… I’m probably not going to like what I see at the end of the month. Oh well…

@Rea: I actually think it is healthy that you and your dear one keep separate finances. I do the same with my GF, and we do a good job. I mean, we share the money, it is just that each of us administrate a different half of it. It seemed unfair that if you worked hard and earned it, somebody else gets to decide how to spend it… So, we divided the bills and she will pay some of them, I pay the rest. If she needs extra money, she knows she only has to tell me (after all it is her money too, it comes out of the “making-GF-happy-expenses” account). ^_^