Budgeting--What format do you use?

[Slandgie]

I use the Excel spreadsheet. Probably one of the greatest inventions since sliced bread. (Is sliced bread REALLY an invention?!)

I usually keep it projected out about 6 to 8 months in advance and include all of our bills, both monthly and annual bills. I also include our paychecks. I have two jobs, one pays weekly and the other is bi-weekly. The wife gets paid bi-weekly. My second job is delivering pizzas on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. I try to pick up extra days when I am in town (My first job is a traveling job)

I always deposit whatever my tips are for the night, keeping out gas money. As soon as I get home, I adjust my budget spreadsheet to see how it looks. Sometimes I make more than I budgeted, sometimes less.

But overall, it's a much better system than doing the knee-jerk reaction...oh crap, the electric bill just came in the mail! Do we have enough to pay it?

Do any of you use spreadsheets for budgeting purposes? If so, how do you do it?

[Broken Arrow]

I use a dedicated program (Splashmoney), but conceptually, I use the envelope system. I break bills down to per-paycheck, and have the program automatically set aside that amount each time.

For example, if I have a bill that is $40 a month, and I get paid bi-weekly, I tell my program to deduct $20 on every pay date set to the name of that bill.

With bills that fluctuate, I err on the high side, and if I have any leftover, I eventually sweep it into my overall savings. (The physical money doesn't actually move. Just the numbers that are budgeted on the program does.)

The beauty of this system is that it doesn't matter what kind of billing cycle it is. I'm always ready. For example, if I have a bill that is quarterly and is $120 each time, break that down to per-paycheck, it automatically sets aside $20 each pay period.

I also budget Christmas and birthdays this way, automatically, like an annual bill.

[Caoineag]

Another excel fan here. I use formulas for my cashflow, debt payoff, amoritization of student loan and mortgage and projection of savings. Needless to say, I have multiple pages going with all my information.

[elessar78]

Yes. Sliced Bread is an invention. I don't think it's even more than 85 years old.

[Slandgie]

Elessar, you are right! Just googled it...and here I thought it was just a witty ole saying!

Cao: Same here, I have 4 spreadsheets....Credit card balances, Car loan balances, Total debt balances (credit cards, car loans, mortgage), and deposits/payments.

[Beppington]

I use Excel for my budget, portfolio tracking & analysis, & many, many other things. It's great.

[elessar78]

I keep my budgeting in a notebook and write things down by hand. It started when I just got out of college and needed to learn how to budget. I've tried to adapt my system to Excel and become computer based but it doesn't feel the same for me. Writing it down gives me a keen awareness of what my money is doing and how much I have.

I think entering numbers into a spreadsheet never gave me the same kind of awareness. There's probably something with the mental act of subtracting expenditures from my total that makes it more real.

I wonder if my household cash flow will ever become too complicated for this system? I like it because it works best when expenses are rhythmic. When new payments come into the cycle then it takes a month or two for me to become comfortable with the new rhythm.

Interesting note about rhythmic expenses (generally the same month to month). The one time I tried to switch to digital bookeeping, the software had a feature where it would give you a line graph of income and out flow. Guess what? The line graph looked eerily similar to what one would see on an electrocardiogram printout of a human heartbeat. I'm not trying to make some grandiose observation about how personal finance is the heart beat of the household (or am I?), just pointing out a neat coincidence.

[elessar78]

Elessar, you are right! Just googled it...and here I thought it was just a witty ole saying!.

Haha. Nice. You know how I found out about that? It was just recently too. The famous Penn State football coach, Joe Paterno, turned 85 (or something like that) and ESPN played this game "Older or younger than Joe Pa?"

Sliced bread was invented after he was born as was chewing gum! Interesting to think that those things haven't been around forever. More interesting is that the toaster is actually older than sliced bread? Who knew?

[kork13]

Another excel fan here. I use formulas for my cashflow, debt payoff, amoritization of student loan and mortgage and projection of savings. Needless to say, I have multiple pages going with all my information.

Same here. I keep my budget in excel, as well as cash flow estimations, expense tracking, account balance records, a savings calculator, and do my investment re-balancing in the same file (a bunch of different pages). I love the flexibility that excel offers.