Sometimes when you have a hard time hitting your financial goals, you need to change you rather than try to do things the “traditional” way.  For us, it’s realizing that we need a place where the money is 100% hands off, no touching, EVER.  To that end, I’m starting a second Savings fund.  I’m calling this one our “Emergency” fund.  This one can be touched.  This one is for when the car breaks and it’s more than $500 or the furnace goes or the water heater.  Big stuff.  Emergency stuff.  I’m hoping that knowing I have money I can touch versus money that absolutely shouldn’t be touched will help us hit our goal by the end of the year.

Wish us luck!

It’s quite enlightening.  I was able to see that we’re much more likely to go out to eat during summer months than winter.  Knowing that, I can now plan my budget accordingly.  The spreadsheet also tells me the average of what we actually spent each month.  It helps me to be able to validate that what I budgeted for the year was correct.  It also will help me tweak for this year.  If there’s any extra money to be wrung out for loans or saving, I’m gonna find it.

I’ve got this list, you see.  It’s got all the things I’d like to buy written down on it.  Those items are then ranked. #1 for the things that I’m going to buy next, #2 for the next, on down to #100 which is my catchall for someday/maybe.  But being the bargain-hunter I am, I find it extremely hard to pass up a good deal.

So how am I dealing?  I’m trying really hard not to lose sight of those goals on my list.  When I feel myself tempted by an ad that I’m reading, I take a look at my list and remind myself of what my #1 goals are.  It’s worked okay so far, but there’s still that feeling of loss and worry that there’ll never be a deal as good again.  Then I remember that Christmas is coming up and the retailers will be trying just as hard to get people in the stores…

This is not your credit score, but instead gives you a list off all the accounts that are open in your name.  For an extra $5 to $10 each, you can get your actual credit score from one (or all) of the credit bureaus.

Here’s one such article about having a membership at Sam’s Club or Costco.

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2009/04/21/is-your-local-warehouse-store-worth-your-while-heres-how-to-find-out/

I do the spreadsheet for my budget by year. My budgeting system assumes that you have a basic budget put together already. You already know where your money needs to go on a basic level each month. The name of every category that I want to budget for goes on the left hand column. Next to that, I put the amount I’d like to budget for each month in that category.

Across the top of every column, I put the date of every single paycheck that we’ll get that year. I even include columns for our tax refund (if we’re lucky enough to get one) and any bonus’. One way in which Google Calendars can once again come in handy is to create a calendar just for your paychecks (especially if you’re a 2 income home and get paid on different days). It makes it a bit faster if you have a reference to help with the dates.

I’ve created a sample template in Google Docs so you can see what I’m talking about.

I started to do my budget this way once I realized that my husband and I had different pay schedules. He’s on a twice a month and I’m every 2 weeks. Money comes in at such strange times and I needed to make sure I was going to have the money in the bank (and envelope) for each bill at the correct time.

I hope this helps folks understand how I get things organized. It’s pretty labor intensive to get going, but once it’s in place there’s little to do.

Good luck and feel free to leave question in the comments.

I think that this is especially necessary if only one of you pays all the bills. It’s a way for the other person in the relationship to understand what’s happening and lightens the stress on the person paying the bills. For my husband and I, it’s a time when we sit for an hour and only discuss financial stuff. I’ve even been known to ban laptops from the room so we can focus. I typically put together a little list of stuff ahead of time as I think of it and then we talk about those items. At some point we typically end up talking about our future goals and what we’d like to see for ourselves in the future. Sometimes we talk about the next year or two and sometimes we talk about five years down the road and sometimes we talk about life after retirement. It has become a way for us to hear the other person’s goals and align the dreams for our future into one picture. The point is that it’s a time when we focus only on things related to finances and our future, nothing else comes into the conversation.

In the past year or so, I’ve started creating Envelopes for any purchase that I can predict. For example, you know that you’re going to have to buy new tires for your car every 5 years or so. So if your tires cost you $500 over 5 years, that’s $100 a year or $8.33 a month. I’ve started putting away $8 or 9 a month every month so that when the time comes to get new tires, we’ll be ready.


Getting started with this is a little tricky. Say you bought tires 2 years ago, you’ll have to save that $500 over 3 years instead of 5. I put together a spreadsheet of items like that so it was easier to see the math. The columns I created were: Item Name, Total Cost of Item, Number of Months till Needed, Cost per Month. The only column that has an equation in it is the “Cost per Month” column. The equation is “Total cost” divided by “Number of Months”.


A byproduct of this is that we’re now able to save more consistently. Because we have money already set aside for our large purchases, we’re not scamming money out of the Emergency fund to try to cover these bills. It also gives you a little peace of mind to know that when the time comes and you need to make that purchase, the money is already there.