Managing Money

[Weedygarden]

I am curious how others here manage your money? Do you use a budget? Do you have financial goals? Is it money in and money out, no analysis of spending? Do you monitor your money with Quickbooks? Do you and your spouse work together on money? Is one of you a spendthrift and one of you a tightwad? Are you a spendthrift or a tightwad?

I could write a book, and had written a long post, and then decided to keep it simple to being with. I will come back later and talk about a few things, but just wanted to start the thread for now.

I track expenses and income on a spreadsheet. But I monitor money in other ways.

 

[LadyLocust]

I track all spending & savings (well, and deposits of course). I don't do spread sheets but do keep this info in a simple journal style notebook. I've tried various methods and have to stick with one I will do. I put all receipts in an envelope on my desk. At the end of the month, I go through and categorize and tally everything up. I primarily do the envelope method for grocery money. We have very few bills which helps.

 

[Supervisor42]

I am a tightwad. I buy what I need and sort it out at the end of the month.
Me & DW have had separate finances since day one because 9 out of 10 marital disputes are over money. Her previous spouse had robbed her blind, even her retirement savings.
We have lived in harmony for 33 years .
If she spends too much, I don't have to say a word.

 

[HippoTwilight]

I’ll describe my method as Excel. I do zero-based budgeting. Track spending by categories. Watch trends. Some category allowances are “is what it is”, while others have limits or goals. We don’t micromanage how much specific items cost. E-fund target is based on the 12mo average spending of select categories. It’s my best single indicator of inflation and/or lifestyle creep. I’m not at the point of tracking long term assets, those are on autopilot for now. They’ll be fine as long as we hit our monthly goals.

After our taxes are complete I use Excel and a website to generate a Sankey diagram to show our annual “flow” of money for a give tax year. It’s mostly for funzies. The category trends are my main focus. It’s a nice quick high level snapshot of the year though.

 

[dademoss]

My wife and I have separate checking accounts, and a joint savings account. the expenses are relatively fixed, there is a bit of room in the budget for "MAD" money for each of us. We both track with spreadsheets. For big outages, we send a note to our money guys and get a extra withdrawal.

 

[havasu]

At my age, I know what I take home, and buy what I need/want. Any excess is dumped into either my savings or money market accounts. My kids will enjoy my left over $.

 

[Amish Heart]

We've always had joint accounts, and we discuss high priced purchases, but not small ones. We made sure we had no bills like a mortgage or car payments when we retired, except for the monthly ones that are unavoidable, like gas, electric, phone, car insurance.

 

[Neb]

We use Dave Ramsey Every Dollar. It links to all of our accounts and only have to click on which category a purchase is assigned to. We just have to watch no category goes in the red.

Excess goes into building up the emergency fund.

Ben

 

[Bacpacker]

Wife has a checking and savings, I have a savings, and we have joint checking and savings for bills and such.
I pay the bills and have tracked it on a spread sheet for years. Recently I got some software to track a longer term look at now and when we retire. Get more detailed plans

 

[Pearl]

Joint everything, but I'm the boss ! Budget for bills and property taxes! Our motto, "careful"!!

 

[Magpie]

We are joint everything with no problems, but I handle everything. OH is self employed and in the past may have to wait weeks to get paid. No sure how we did it back when the children were small. Things are a little better now, we live pretty simply, all the usual bills have been disposed of- no phone, mortgage or cable - I keep our receipts to see what we spent on food, but our vehicles are old and have gotten expensive to run. We paid 600 to get my car through the MOT this month and 1,400 for his van which was horrendous, and it still needs new tyres and a clutch. Because my car is old it also has the higher rate of car tax. However it's very fuel efficient. I'm looking to change it but everything is pretty expensive. We just have a checking account, and I check it online weekly- at the end of the month it has a pie chart showing where money was spent, which is useful.

 

[UrbanHunter]

In the early 1980s we started out what you would call poor... or less affluent (<$20K/year, two incomes). We raised our family as we (I) went back to college. Everything is joint. In the 80s and 90s we limited our "unapproved" individual expenditures to less than $5 and those had to be kept to under $20/month. Everything else is decided as a council, 1 veto stops the buy... Today we are better off, but we still try to limit our individual expenses, anything over $100 still requires a discussion. We keep our finances private, even our kids don't know what we do or don't have. Now days we are a single earner family and we try to put 19% into a retirement fund, 10% to church donations, and use the rest to live and pay down our debts. I have goals for my retirement fund(by year), the dates that big debts will be paid off, and when I can retire and how much cash we will have when I get there.

Explanation on church donations and retirement savings %s. We always paid 10% tithes to the church, but when I got a job with retirement matching we decided to put in enough to get the match (it did result in a take home pay cut), every time I got a raise I put all of the increase into the retirement fund. I figured if I was paying all my bills on time I didn't really "need" the extra money and if I put it away before I got used to having it all the better. I worked for 14 years without ever bringing a raise home.....

I was a mechanic before I went back to college so I keep our cars a long time, usually between 15 and 30 years. We have never bought a new car as we just can't justify the cost of driving that new car smell off the lot...

I use Excel to track our progress and usually check/update it twice a month. Right now our retirement horizon is August of 2024 at the soonest, but one extra expense could delay that...

To be honest we fret over our expenses and our time lines because we would like to just retire now but that would not be responsible.... To us a $500 expense is still a big deal and we find it hard to pull the trigger on spending the money.

 

[FarmOR]

I keep my personal and business accounts separate. I track my business very detailed with a simple AP called expense register. It's either add or subtract.

When monthly bank statements are available, I sit down for fifteen minutes with a highlighter and pen to make notes. At the end of the year, all I need do is gather those 12 statements and compile that information for the accountant. Typically spend four hours on that.

My personal account is much looser. But I am extreme cheapskate by almost anyone standards? I don't keep much money at the bank, preferring to dump all that I can into a brokerage. That was one of the smarter things I've ever done!

I'm one of those that can't scrape cash together to buy an extra sandwich because that sandwich money is in the market... But on the rare occasion that I find a legitimate asset for a value price, I can put the money up in less than a week time. *Albeit doing the diligence about what to sell when and potential gains vs loss and tax implications?

My mechanical aptitude is very high. That has proven a big advantage for personal transportation costs and farm equipment.

 

[Weedygarden]

We use Dave Ramsey Every Dollar. It links to all of our accounts and only have to click on which category a purchase is assigned to. We just have to watch no category goes in the red.

Excess goes into building up the emergency fund.

Ben

I have not heard of that Dave Ramsey program. I'm about to go out the door, but will research when I have time. I'd like to hear more about it.

 

[zoomzoom]

Like a few others here, the Mrs and I keep our funds and accounts separate. We each have financial obligations to the family & household. I pay taxes, utilities (and at one time, the mortgage). She pays for food, (at one time all the kids needs but they're grown), capital improvements to the house.

We don't really keep close track of expenses. I can hear her in the other room right now booking a $5000 cruise. No biggy to me. It's her money.

 

[Caribou]

I always tried to spend less than I brought in. One trick I used, because I know myself. I used to get a tool catalog several times a year. I was like a kid in a candy shop. When it came in I'd sit down and go through it with a highlighter and pick out at least a dozen tools, sometimes two dozen, that I "needed." I'd then set the catalog aside for at least two weeks. I'd wind up buying 0 to 2 tools. I got suckered a couple of times till I developed this trick.

I learned to pay off my debt. I paid off my first house in about 9 years. When I got sick and had no income for 8 or 9 months I survived because I had no mortgage. The second house got paid off in over 5 years. The current house was free and clear in a year. Paying interest never made any sense to me. With a 30 year mortgage I paid double for my home. If something happened, to me or the economy, I am not at risk of losing my home.

Sometime after we got married the wife and I bought a new Jeep. As we drove off the lot the wife, all happy and wiggly said, "I never thought I'd ever pay cash for a car." I responded, "Did you really think you'd drive that old Subaru for the rest of your life?" "Oh, I forgot who I married." I can buy more stuff if I don't give half my money to the bank.

 

[Bacpacker]

Like a few others here, the Mrs and I keep our funds and accounts separate. We each have financial obligations to the family & household. I pay taxes, utilities (and at one time, the mortgage). She pays for food, (at one time all the kids needs but they're grown), capital improvements to the house.

We don't really keep close track of expenses. I can hear her in the other room right now booking a $5000 cruise. No biggy to me. It's her money.

Thats mostly how we do as well. She gets food, stuff for the house, etc. And made her car payment. I pay the bills, repairs, farm type stuff. And fund the 401k, HSA, all insurance, etc. Works for us

 

[LadyLocust]

Hubby and I are joint on everything, but he couldn't tell you what's where. I tell him things & he says he trusts me (I am the frugal one). I tell him he needs to know incase I get hit by a bus. He says I won't get hit by a bus. When I responded incase I get hit by a texting driver, he didn't like it. He at least knows where to go if something were ever to happen to me.

 

[HippoTwilight]

Hubby and I are joint on everything, but he couldn't tell you what's where. I tell him things & he says he trusts me (I am the frugal one). I tell him he needs to know incase I get hit by a bus. He says I won't get hit by a bus. When I responded incase I get hit by a texting driver, he didn't like it. He at least knows where to go if something were ever to happen to me.

We're also joint on everything that gets used. We have individual accounts, but they're dormant. I had to make a text document with explicit information about any/every money related thing for my other half. It started out as instructions for her but as I thought of more things, or added new accounts, it also become kind of a registry of our finances. It's easy to forget the things we don't touch on a routine basis. Like my work pension account. Or the 401k from 2 jobs ago that hasn't been rolled over.
Every account number, account type, institution it's with, special instructions for how to handle things (especially the investment accounts).
Billing cycles and due dates for everything that has one... credit cards, insurance, mortgage, utilities, Netflix, etc...
Then also instructions on how to access passwords for my accounts, which are all saved in a password manager.

The file has multi-layer encryption (file level, folder level with some other stuff, and entire hard-drive level), and the encrypted files are saved in multiple offline and cloud tools. For the time being, she knows the passwords to access it. I'll work that information into the lawyer/estate paperwork one day.

 

[sonya123]

I have a money spell. Had it for over 30 years.
Since I have had it I haven't run out of money

 

[Magpie]

I always tried to spend less than I brought in. One trick I used, because I know myself. I used to get a tool catalog several times a year. I was like a kid in a candy shop. When it came in I'd sit down and go through it with a highlighter and pick out at least a dozen tools, sometimes two dozen, that I "needed." I'd then set the catalog aside for at least two weeks. I'd wind up buying 0 to 2 tools. I got suckered a couple of times till I developed this trick.

Thats always a good plan. Sometimes on the weekend if I'm up late I put stuff - and it is always 'stuff'- into baskets and leave them there. Chances are a week later I get a discount voucher and a reminder that I have stuff in my basket. If I really need it, great, but 99% of the time I don't bother.

 

[Neb]

Thats always a good plan. Sometimes on the weekend if I'm up late I put stuff - and it is always 'stuff'- into baskets and leave them there. Chances are a week later I get a discount voucher and a reminder that I have stuff in my basket. If I really need it, great, but 99% of the time I don't bother.

I did that for SimpliSafe and get a 40% discount on my entire system.

Ben

 

[FarmOR]

I'd just read this from an collection of western sayings:

"don't let your yearnings outrun your earnings"

"if you don't buy what you want, you'll have money for what you need"

 

[Magpie]

My Dad - ' Don't buy it if you can't afford it' basically don't buy anything on HP

 

[Supervisor42]

You know if I had half a brain, I would have been slowly draining money out of my IRA over the past 3 years even though I didn't need it.
I know we will need a big chunk years from now when we move.
If you pull a big chunk in one year, you pay a much higher percentage in taxes because it puts you in a much higher income bracket.
I guess this is a "don't be me" post .

 

[Bacpacker]

Super, in a similar vein, I've been looking at my 401 which has both Roth and traditional funds, plus company matches on both. Trying to decide where to start once I retire. I was thinking I'd start doing Roth conversions soon as I retire, up to the tax rate amount for a given year. But after some in-depth planning I'm leaning heavily toward just pulling it yearly and postponing SSA until I hit FRA, or maybe even 70. Our taxable income will be very low and could probably empty most of it before RMD's hit. Plus the new rules on RMD's being moved back to 73 or 75 instead of 70. Roth will just be a long term emergency fund.
At least that's the current planning

 

[UrbanHunter]

About 4 years ago I had been watching my retirement fund hover except my contributions, So I made a plan. I will keep contributing to the fund so I get the employer matching and I made small withdraws to pay on the mortgage.

I learned that once I hit 65 the state didn't tax withdraws up to a limit, so I started taking out just short of that limit each year.... Paid off my mortgage 16 years early, then I switched to some smaller debts. It may not be the case in every state, but I would suggest looking into it.

For full disclosure, after paying the taxes on the withdraws I only saved about $2000, but I figure it's better than a poke in the eye...

 

[Woody]

For full disclosure, after paying the taxes on the withdraws I only saved about $2000, but I figure it's better than a poke in the eye...

That is $2,000 of YOUR money that did not get laundered through Ukraine or some other company to help finance our corrupt politicians funds.