That’s what I did last night. A year and a half ago, I finally came up with a budgeting system that works for me. I know, I know, you hear the word ‘budget’ and you run screaming as if I’d just told you to hand over every one of your paychecks to the tightwad gazette for the rest of your life.

Not so. Budgeting is really pretty harmless, even to those with spending addictions. Like myself. And it’s simple. Takes up hardly any time, and makes it so I don’t HAVE to feel guilty - or play dumb - when I buy something, and then get a ‘your check has bounced’ noticed from the bank.

Budgeting is all about finding out how much money you can spend for fun, made possible by doing a little math every now and then to figure out how much money you need for… well, things you NEED. Like rent, and telephone, and heat, and mac n cheese. Yep. I do not budget so I can be in control of my finances. I budget so I don’t have to put a billion things I truly desire back on the shelf all because I can’t figure out whether I’ll have enough money to pay the phone bill coming up in two weeks. See? It’s rewarding!

I have a fun system that works for me. There’s budget calculators all over the web for free, budget worksheets, programs like quicken, yadda yadda. They’re nice, but they tend not to fit ME too well. I’ve got an unusual situation - I don’t pay a lot of bills that some people do - and I do have some odd bills that most budget things don’t calculate for.

My tools:

I use an index card system, with a little binder clip to keep them all together so I can pack the current and recent past cards (up to a year’s worth) around with me wherever I go, such as, to work, where I do most of my budgeting.

Every paycheck gets its own index card. Every paycheck varies with my schedule, so I do about 3 months at a time, and when I get into the third month, I do up another three months or so, counting ahead and figuring out what each paycheck will be. I average out my net total every month, and now have a handy little list of what (on average) my paycheck will be for all the usual shift configurations I have.

Then I list out what bills need to be paid that month, and the dates. And eventually, I plug them into the cards, ensuring that a) every bill gets paid on time (I typically pay bills twice a month - on payday), and b) I always have some, at least a little, extra money left over. Twice a year, when three paychecks come in a month, it all gets screwed up, and I have to pay bills on different checks than usual, or sometimes, I’ll just have a short paycheck, and have to split up a bill between a couple checks. That’s why I do three months at a time - much easier that way to keep things like that from sneaking up on me.

I do a rough draft on paper, where I write additional notes, such as the number of days worked in that pay period, overtime/holiday pay notes, etc. and THEN I commit them to index cards. I don’t like to scribble all over my index cards rearranging things. I do it anyway, every month but I like my first scribbles to be done on paper. I keep the paper for future reference, too. Just in case.

Anyway. I’ve done my budgeting through April, actually. Why April? Because March was a three-paycheck month, and stopping there and not knowing what was up with April was driving me nuts.

Anyway, my conclusion from all of this? I should be able to buy a new computer! See how much fun that was? Definitely worth the time it took.

3 Comments »

1. I love it! You’ve turned budgeting into a deep dive into everything that makes you comfortable. Favorite pens, colorful cards and so on. Your budgeting is as much art as it is math!

   :-)

   Comment by K T Cat — December 14, 2006 @ 2:49 am

2. I think I’ll try this! What do you use the different colors for?

   Comment by Janet — January 11, 2007 @ 2:10 pm

3. Absolutely nothing, Janet, except I like them better because they’re pretty. *lol* If I’d started with a full deck of them, rather than just a handful of leftovers, I’d have perhaps used a different color for each quarter.

   Comment by Katia — January 12, 2007 @ 3:03 am

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