geekgirlfibers replied to your post “I got my first paycheck from my new job today, and used it as an...”
That sounds so satisfying. Do you have a spreadsheet to go with it?
I DO. It’s even a split spreadsheet to manage the two-checks-per-month issue. I’d screenshot it but it’s difficult to redact, but yeah, I rebuilt the spreadsheet when I changed jobs and used the rebuild to start thinking about restructuring my payments.
crofethr replied to your post “I got my first paycheck from my new job today, and used it as an...”
Teach me your ways ;__; I can't budget to save my life
In terms of budgeting, what helped me the most was going to my bank website and exporting the last three months of checking account transactions to an excel file. I went through and removed the deposits, so I was left with every payment I’d made in the past three months. Then I sorted them by type -- like, this was a grocery purchase, this was a meal out, this was a food delivery, this was medication, this was a monthly utility bill, this was clothing, this was books, etc.
Then I grouped them back together, so like -- books and clothing were renamed “stuff”, medication (because I don’t pay much for it) was grouped in with grocery, all meal purchases (both out and delivery) were combined, all utility bills, rent, and other “housing” costs were combined.
So what I ended up with was four “major expenses”: Bills, Meals, Grocery, Stuff. And because I had all of my transactions listed, I could say, in the past three months I spent X on each of these expenses. Divide that by three, and this is about what I spend on each section per month. That helped me figure out where I should be maybe cutting back, what I should be allocating for X or Y each month, etc.
Then I built a spreadsheet with columns for each of these expenses, and tracked how much I spent on each -- and if I was getting too close to going over, I’d be aware of it and pull myself back. It was a lot of work to set up but it’s second nature now! The spreadsheet is just always open in google docs and pinned to my chrome tab bar.
gemini-melia replied to your post “I got my first paycheck from my new job today, and used it as an...”
I've thought about doing this, but it feels like a lot of effort. I might have to try now...
Honestly, when I thought about doing it, it seemed like a lot of effort to me, too. I ended up doing a little flow chart of my money, and then I kinda worked backwards, which helped.
Like -- My paycheck goes into checking. Checking pays into four places: Second Checking, Savings 1, Savings 2, and “bills” which isn’t really a place, it’s just billpays that come out of checking.
Second Checking pays into mortgage. Why not move all the “bills” into second checking too? So I’d find a bill, set it so that Second Checking paid it, and then take the amount of the bill and add it to the amount that First Checking was paying into Second Checking every month. That was the hardest part, because some bills were paid from my bank, and some billed my bank, so I had to go to a couple of different websites. But this immediately took a BUNCH of complicated stuff and just...shoved it downstream so I don’t have to deal with it.
Then I looked at Savings 1 and Savings 2. Savings 2 paid into two investments accounts I have. Why did I even have two savings accounts? There was no reason for that. So I told my bank to stop putting anything into Savings 2, and instead added that amount into what I was already paying into Savings 1. I moved both investment accounts to be paid by Savings 1, shifted all of the money in Savings 2 into my investment accounts, and closed down Savings 2.
Voila -- now instead of four places, one of which isn’t a place, over the course of about a week, my money goes into two places on the first of the month: Second Checking and Savings. Everything else splits off from there. And I know that whatever is in First Checking is what I can spend on food, entertainment, baubles, etc for the month.
