i go to the bar and spend money on alcohol. when i come home i pay my bills.
i end most pay periods with 2.65 in my bank account and then i fukk the world.

I just buy whatever the i want and pay off cc at the end of the month. Dont spend more than i make and thats about it. Its not rocket surgery.

Yea I put everything on my credit card (literally everything), and pay it off whenever I need to.

no savings for Fae?

I have been doing that too. I dont want to anymore heh.

Good knowing what you homos use.


How many of you forecast what you anticipate to have in your account in say 3 months, 6 months, a year, etc?

Credit score: 837 out of 850

It was because of my amazing credit score I was able to sell my house.

This.

I'm not really into computers, gadgets, clothes, cameras or other expensive hobbies, so there really isn't any money drain except regular bills which makes it pretty easy to save money. I also find it easy to stop buying things for the Miata now that I consider it a long term project.

I also don't smoke or drink, other than stocking up on liquor from the USA to put on the shelf to pretend that I do.

Damn, my life sounds so boring now.

In my wallet I currently have.......0 credit cards. I might get another one just to use for gas and shitz, but otherwise I havent used one in a couple years. I had a tendency to get a little out of control with them.

My credit score is in the good range, but on the lower side. Both times I broke my hands I got behind on a few bills once or twice and it was enough to hurt my score pretty good. The past 2 years I've been solid though, so I'm hoping it keeps slowly climbing.

I am another Excel guy. We generally use it more for projections and estimations than for actually tracking every dollar spent. I have a "household budget" tab that gets updated every few months or if something significant changes. It is fairly detailed in the estimations for recurring variable costs. For example, if there is something that happens once a quarter, we annualize the amount and then divide by 12 to give it a monthly figure.

I use fuel estimations for each vehicle and generally have been pretty accurate in forward projections. We calculate food costs, including lunch out and groceries but not dinners out (which we don't eat a lot of and often have gift cards for).

I generally take the lesser of mean or median income because ours can vary quite a bit as we are not on fixed salaries and try to err on the side of caution there. That's pulled from a separate tab that tracks income on a per-paycheck basis, incorporating gross, Fed taxable and net figures.

We have another tab that tracks retirement savings across all accounts, including employer sponsored plans like profit sharing, 401k, ESOP, etc. In addition to the balances, I track amounts contributed to make sure we try to do more each year.

I kind of like that process better than using a Mint.com style aggregator. Because it's more manual, I feel like it forces me to pay closer attention to the different elements. :)

Nice! :winner:

For better or worse, I tend to think of my credit score like I think of the APR on my credit cards - I rarely actually use either so I don't pay much attention to them.

The first part is a goal, not a budget. it isn't how everyone wants to live or needs to live.

The second part is good and will keep people out of trouble. also budget for emergencies.

I am sure I can find 15 minutes to do it at work in a month. :)

Just use Excel over here. 2011 budget = $35000. Actual spent = $31500. Majority of difference was the 8% medical (not sure why we put $2400 in the budget but we only spent $187).

I use excel here too..

I have a worksheet that balances my checkbook and also so I know exactly what I have to spend and what I can save, a worksheet to predict my net worth on a monthly basis for a few years, a worksheet that tracks what my monthly food expense is so I can try to ween it down, a worksheet with all my student loans amortized so I can calculate how much an extra payment on any given month will reduce my overall interest expense and loan length, a worksheet for a mortgage calculation and associated amortization table and depreciation schedule (helpful for house hunting), worksheets that track gas mileage, and some other random stuff.

To be honest, this stuff really helps. It gives me a clear defined view of what I can spend and what I can save, and I can look at it, see where I want to be in 3, 6, 12 months, and make changes in my life to get there. And it's been fairly accurate. The only time it was thrown off was when I was under agreement for a house (once in june-ish, once in november) when I was hemorrhaging money on inspections and other stuff.

I guess this is perks of being an accountant/cpa lol

787 out of 830 as of 2008 (not sure what it is now). Paid off all $125,000 in credit card debt in one day and amazingly the credit card offers stopped coming in. In the past 13 years I bet I haven't gotten 10 total.

I use a version of rmcelwee's excel sheet

Track every single penny, each card swipe/bill pay is a line item. I also use a Subara Chase Mastercard so I get 3% Subarubucks on everything.

Tracking every single purchase sounds like a lot of work but once you get started it's just like 3 minutes of updating every day.

I would freak out if I spent $1.50 on a soda at the gas station and forgot to write it down.

Actually, bad example because there is no way in hell I buy something from a gas station (or a vending machine, etc). That ---- adds up fast!

Lol, that's probably why you guys were under budget for 2011 and we were over...

Buying sh*t at gas stations I mean, not not tracking every $0.01 spent at said convenience store.

I dont think that I am a person to track literally every penny. I could see how it is benefital but tracking this between myself and the fiance could prove to be difficult.

I like the MINT.com setup because I try not to spend cash. Either debit or my travel rewards VISA (which I dont carry a balance on) so I can view all of my expenses as opposed to seeing CASH withdrawl on my statement but not how the monies were spent.


I talked with a friend on friday about some strategies on how to allocate some savings. Now I think that I have some obtainable goals to strive for.


How do you guys who are married/engaged/been with someone for a while manage the money between you and your signifigant other?

Build megasquirts so she doesn't know what crap you spend your money on?

I was a small business advisor so she leaves it all to me. :bigtu:

We basically follow the same approach as Brain and when I decided to go back to school for engineering we had 2 years tuition and books saved. We bought our first place on $30k income and made it work eating pasta most nights that and paying off bad debt instantly and avoiding interest like the plague. I keep a separate account that the bill $'s go into and the bills come out of we buy meat and other foods on sale. Extra money goes into a high interest account, we usually save 20-30% of gross. We're in our mid 20's with 3 vehicles paid for, a house paid for (partially inheritance), both our degrees paid for and I'm not incurring debt being back at school.

Fill your spare time with work and projects and you benefit with nice stuff cheaply, sometimes make money and you learn, we were redoing a small house over my xmas break.

Since you're in Canada do you take advantage of PC banking? I was with RBC but always kept accounts with PC since it's free and chequeing accounts pay interest. IDK if PC does it but RBC had a tool that gave you a pie graph of your spending as it categorized debits including bills to tell where your spending was by dollar and %.

I use TD banking. My account costs me $3 a month and I never go over my transactions because I use my credit for everything besides rent and insurance. three transactions cover my monthly expenses and i use 2-4 transactions additionally per month to move money around into savings and such.