I am sitting down to do our budget for March. To be honest, we’ve been “coasting along” for the past two months, making a few “I want that” purchases. My wife and I talked about it last night, and we are both ready to “ramp it back up” and redo our budget. Here’s the process we go through for creating our budget.
I enjoy the “math side” of the budget. I crunch the numbers, input them into our budget software, and print out a copy for my wife.
Once my wife gets a copy of the budget, she’s free to make ANY CHANGES that she wants to make. My wife has been so super-cool throughout this whole process. There are times when she is aware of expenses that I forget, and vice versa. We make a pretty awesome team.
This “system” really works for us and our personalities. Every couple will have to figure out the best system for their personalities. We have friends who both sit down at the computer and create the budget together. My wife would be bored to tears working with all of the numbers and the computer stuff. So, I do that part of the budget and she reviews the printout. After she finishes making changes, I create a “corrected” budget, and that is our plan for the month.
Here’s how we avoid arguing about money:
–We create a budget and agree to work within the guidelines of that budget.
–We sit down once or twice a week and talk about any adjustments that need to be made to the budget.
–If we plan to spend more than X-amount of money (outside of what we have budgeted) we sit down and talk about it.
–We trust each other.
–If we have extra income (from eBay or one of my sites) all of it goes towards our current savings goals.
–We have learned to be content with the blessings that we already have.
–We create a REALISTIC budget. If a bill averages $100 per month, we don’t budget $75 and “hope” that we’ll be right. No, we budget $110 and rejoice if the bill comes in at $90!
–We stretch to reach our goals, but we do not “over-stretch”.
–We don’t really have to think about money. Now that we are out of debt and have our emergency fund fully funded, we are free to relax, live on a budget, and think about the “truly” important things.
Your budgeting sounds very sensible. I wish I had the same luck with my spouse. We work opposite from you. I, the wife prepare all the budgets and monitor the spending. My hubby’s attitude is that he earns the money and that is all he is concerned with. I tell him what we need each month and then he goes out and earns it. If I am off on the budget, and things get tight and he has already stuck to his side of the bargain, he will NOT cut back on anything to make the budget work. I have to make the budget work. Period.
Two weeks ago we were running short. I cut back on TV service and food shopping. Hubby blew his stack when his favorite TV shows weren’t on and his favorite gourmet snacks were not in the fridge.
I can’t blame him. He is right. But sometimes things happen (like a snowstorm). I tapped into our emergency fund to buy a generator and freaked out. Now, 3 weeks later, we are back on track. TV shows back on and shopping trips back to status quo.
Ummmm…
“I can’t blame him”…
You must be a better person than I am.
(I shall withhold further comment while my head explodes…)
Sounds like you have a great plan going here! That’s similar to how the wife and I are going through this.
Are you using YNAB or YNAB Pro? My wife and I have discussed moving from our very basic spreadsheet to something like YNAB or YNAB Pro. Just curious which one you are using..
Crazy, I never had an argument on money either. And we don’t discuss the budget. I told DH we save the maximum for retirement as soon as possible. We buy a home not more than this much. We are going to have $10k in college savings by future kid’s 1st b-day.
Then magically it all happens and I tell him we can spent $1k/month on eating and fun. That’s all our disposable income. And then we enjoy. He never sabotages or spends money we don’t have. We don’t buy stuff without consulting him.
Jointly we just make a lot of decisions, I think our luck has been having married someone who shares identical money values. We specifically married someone who had the same idea, debt = bad, saving maximum = good, buy house = good, college = important. Everything else fell into place.
Having just been through the nightmare of needing to refinance in order to pay off debt, I really appreciate your common-sense approach. I’ve made my budget and feel much better about life these days. Too bad I didn’t have the forethought, like you, to do it BEFORE I got into trouble!
Wonderful addition to the Carnival of Family Life! Great post!
We’re always travelling and these tips on money can be a great help when it comes to budgeting trips. We’ve so made a link to your site in one of our posts.
“We trust each other” is probably THE BIGGEST REASON you guys are maximizing your financial potential!
Way to go!