Jeff and I will be working on our budget this month. We definitely need a tune-up and I'm excited to work on it! I love working with numbers. It's like a big puzzle to figure out. Lots of changes and new priorities this year that we want to build our budget around. I wanted to share my favorite all time way to budget. This completely turned our marriage around and I don't say this lightly....we never fight about money...ever. I am so thankful to not have this stress so this is why I push Dave Ramsey. I realize he's not for everyone and we don't follow it step by step but adjust it to our own style and preferences that work so well for us. The one thing we do use and stick to is the Zero - Based budget and you can read more about that
here along with sheets to download.
I'll share below the major benefits to this kind of budgeting for our family...
1) Always, always have money in our checking account so I don't have to worry about when I can pay a bill (it was not always like this before we started the program)
2) Freedom to spend money with no guilt because you budgeted it in
3) There's money for rainy days when you start and work your way up the baby steps (we started this system on a very low income 7 years ago).
4) Allows you to give away more of your income to others in need when the needs arises because you can plan for it
5) December is not different than any other month because we've already saved our Christmas spending money throughout the entire year.
Do you dread your budget or love it like me?
We started budgeting this past spring and I was really nervous about it. When we've tried to budget before, I ended up really wanting to spend money just because I knew I couldn't. And I hated trying to keep track of everything on paper. I didn't really understand how and felt really overwhelmed. Then we tried PearBudget and cash envelopes for a few of our expense categories and I LOVE it. Not a fan of paying $55 a year to use it. lol. But having to pay makes me use it. :) PearBudget is so simple and easy to do that I actually enjoy it now. :)
ReplyDeleteJen, we thought we had more money than we truly did so we were spending money we had no business spending before we started a budget. I am glad you find freedom in it now and find something that works. I have never heard of PearBudget. We use an excel spreadsheet to track all ours and will even revamp it more so that I can track better when we over budget in some areas. Do you remember me in college being pretty detailed about my tiny little income? I would have "categories" written in my checkbook. I guess it's how I'm wired!
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