Thoughts on budgets

A couple of weeks ago, Michael and I finally sat down and worked on our budget. I've used Quicken before, but I just hate it. I think it's the mild OCD that I get from my dad. If you approach Quicken from an OCD perspective, it's a nightmare. You can literally sit in front of the screen for hours on end, itemizing every little thing. It's not maintainable for me. So, when we did the budget a couple of weeks ago, I used a simple budget spreadsheet template that I found in our Numbers program on our Mac. There is one section for monthly income, one section for monthly expenses, one section for planned expenses (like vacations, etc.) and one section that tracks savings each month based on the above.

I love my little spreadsheet, and I added a second page to track our actual expenses which I can then compare back against our plans. The problem is that Michael is now hellbent on complicating matters. First, he subscribed to the online version of Quicken and imported all of our bank accounts and credit cards (this literally gives me an anxiety attack). Then, he downloaded an expense program on his iPhone, which he wants me to reconcile against our budget. It's taking all of my energy to not get sucked into this morass of complication, but he's relentless, so we'll see what happens.

The awesome little budget that I made on the spreadsheet, though, seems to be quite effective. We put in monthly amounts for restaurants, groceries, entertainment and allowance, and are already seeing a difference in our day-to-day behaviors. Lunch comes out of our allowance, so we have both been bringing lunch from home (using the weekly grocery budget instead of our own money). I learned last week that poor menu planning will eat up our restaurant budget in a jiffy, so today I made a really firm dinner plan for the week. I also made an effort to include dinners that are good as a bag lunch the following day (see above). Tomorrow night's Asian chicken will be a microwaved lunch on Tuesday, and Tuesday night's meatloaf will be a sandwich on Wednesday.

I know that budgets are the new little black dress. How are you guys all doing it?

Comments

[Jill in Atlanta]

I'm still trying to get my husband to do this. He thinks the perfect budget means "spend money on nothing but bills". And groceries. Me, I'm trying to work in vacations and some kitchen remodeling.

[kyoot]

my answer to the OCD kind of guy is to hand it all over to him and say "I spent...you can't spend...my spend is more important then your spend..." and he backs downa dn just hands over the cash! :P

[The Coffee Lady]

Oh I'm the obsessive one in this relationship - I feel a bit ill if I've been away from my spreadsheets for too long.

[K]

I love Quicken. We don't import our expenses, we attempt to enter them in manually each night. For some reason, just that act - the entering....or the knowing I need to enter....helps curtail the spending. For me. The daily tracking helps us keep on top of the little expenses.

I don't like the budgeting feature in Quicken though. It's too complicated. I'll have to look at our Numbers program for that template.