Do you keep a recorded budget?

[aimeemarie]

We have been keeping a budget for a little over 2 years. We started when we started Dave Ramsey. I will say it does cause for a little bit of stress on our marriage having everything right there but when times are tight it does feel like a safety net to see exactly what we've spent to know we are not over budget.

[Maxie1101]

I've just started to track our spending last month. I was never concerned about it before because I knew we brought in more income than we spent. After I got laid-off two months ago, I wanted to see where our money was going and to verify how long our emergency fund would last. We have no debt except our mortgage, and use credit cards to pay for almost everything and then pay them off at the end of the month. I have an envelope on the kitchen counter where we put all our receipts. At the end of the month I use an excel spreadsheet to track the expenses from the receipts, bank, and credit card statements.

I have not limited our spending in a budget, per se, since I am still tracking our expenses and trying to get an average. My main concern is that I want to put more money in our IRAs, but it's not looking reasonable while I'm out of work.

[Nimbus254]

I started keeping a budget when DH and I were in college and saving to buy a house. Once we got our house in 2001, and a new computer, I discovered a love for Excel spreadsheets. So I've been using those ever since.

I have a spreadsheet for each month, but have income/expenses listed in columns by week as we have a paycheck coming in every week. The amount of each paycheck is at the top of each column, then I list all of our expenses (bills, daycare, food, gas for the car) and at the bottom of the column is what we have leftover for the week.

That carries over to the next column, is added to the next paycheck and then expenses are deducted and so on. At the end of the last column is the amount of money we will have left over at the end of the month if we stick to the budgeted items listed.

The thing that I love the most about it is that if an unexpected expense comes up, I can just put that number into the spreadsheet and immediately see how it will affect the total at the end of the month.

Our bills don't change much, month by month, so I can just copy this month's spreadsheet and save it as August 2009 bills and then just change the numbers if I have to.