It's no secret that Adam and I aren't exactly wealthy. But we like to make the most out of our money, so we try to stick to a budget and keep track of our spending.
In Google Docs, we keep a spreadsheet for each month's expenses.
As the month goes by, we just enter the information from every receipt into the spreadsheet. It's nice to have a running tally of our spending each month.
The category tab on the expenses list corresponds to our monthly budget, another spreadsheet in Google Docs.
We have a budget set for all our basic monthly expenses - everything from rent to postage. Any purchases that aren't in a specific category {like how I destroyed our comforter last month, so we had to buy a new one} go into miscellaenous. We always go over our budget a little, but we plan for that, so it's not a big deal.
But some expenses don't occur every month. So we have another Google Docs spreadsheet that serves as an annual budget.
As you can see, this fake spreadsheet doesn't include everything. That would just be ridiculously long. But you can see that the annual budget includes our basic monthly expenses, as well as travel, education, gifts, and health {dentist appointments, flu shots, etc.} We also keep track of our income in the annual budget, since its hard to balance outgoing funds if you don't have any idea of your incoming funds.
I know our budgeting system probably seems really complicated. We tried using mint.com but there were a few things about the program that just didn't work for us. So we made up our own little system instead. It hardly takes any time at all, I promise! Every time we make a purchase, we just add it to our monthly expenses list and our monthly budget. Then, at the end of the month, we update the annual budget. Not bad at all.
Learning to manage our money has been a challenge this first year of marriage. Since we got married so young, we basically went straight from childhood to adulthood. Although, I have to say, we really don't feel like adults most of the time!
P.S. Just so you know, all of the numbers in this post are made up.
But some expenses don't occur every month. So we have another Google Docs spreadsheet that serves as an annual budget.
As you can see, this fake spreadsheet doesn't include everything. That would just be ridiculously long. But you can see that the annual budget includes our basic monthly expenses, as well as travel, education, gifts, and health {dentist appointments, flu shots, etc.} We also keep track of our income in the annual budget, since its hard to balance outgoing funds if you don't have any idea of your incoming funds.
I know our budgeting system probably seems really complicated. We tried using mint.com but there were a few things about the program that just didn't work for us. So we made up our own little system instead. It hardly takes any time at all, I promise! Every time we make a purchase, we just add it to our monthly expenses list and our monthly budget. Then, at the end of the month, we update the annual budget. Not bad at all.
Learning to manage our money has been a challenge this first year of marriage. Since we got married so young, we basically went straight from childhood to adulthood. Although, I have to say, we really don't feel like adults most of the time!
P.S. Just so you know, all of the numbers in this post are made up.
Well done, Caitlin!! I'm impressed at your financial skills--and of your use of Excel/Googledocs to do it!
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