Do you have AND maintain a household budget?

[cantdrv55]

My wife is so against budgeting. She said it's because in order to maintain the budget, we'd have to track our expenses and I'm no good at it. In the past, I had been really poor at asking for and keeping my receipts so my expense tracking was spotty at best. However, I still feel we should have a budget even though I think we are pretty frugal and already save a huge chunk of our pay through a 401k and an employee stock purchase plan. There's always room for improvement though.

Do you have a budget and how do you stay within it?

[porsche4life]

Yup... I make no money and I spend about double that...

[Chuck Grieb]

Yep - and I highly recommend it. I find it to be very freeing.

[BGCarrera32]

No budget per say, but like you we do put a certain sum away each month, outside of a 401k or any retirement savings. Its nice to know that if the job went bust or I got canned that I wouldn't have to panic for a few months.

On thing I will add, is that if you have kids, you best begin saving for their college education about 6 minutes after they are born if you plan to help them out in any substantial way. Time is on your side if you start early.

[HardDrive]

No.

We keep a cash pad around for emergency. The rest goes into investments, our house, and toys.....not necessarily in that order.

[Hard-Deck]

Yes, it's the sole reason why I'll never have to work after I retire from the military.

Budgeting=Piss Poor Planning equals Piss Poor Performance

[Zef]

Nop...house paid, retirement fund is full for me and my wife (we're both government employees), some money goes for the daughter's scholarship fund, travel and vacation.
Life is too short to budget it.

[dmcummins]

I have tracked my spending and investments for years. My "budget" is really just an average of past spending. It helped me by putting together a spreadsheet just to see where the money goes and how my investments were doing. I never really did without any. Also I retired at 50 and unless I knew how much I was spending,, and how much my investments were making, it would have been difficult to pull the trigger.

[legion]

We do and we don't.

We put money into savings first, then we can spend whatever is left.

[GH85Carrera]

I have been using Quicken to balance my checkbook for over 20 years. I have 20 years of past data to show where I spend my money. I have never set up a budget for my spending.

Just because I don't have a budget does not mean I spend all I want. I have a 1985 Porsche and a 1986 El Camino. I have not had a car payment in this century. I am still in lust for a 2004 GT3. If I find the perfect car I will have tough choices figuring out what spending changes will allow me to afford it. For sure I would have to sell my 85 Carrera that I have had for 14 years.

[Tim Walsh]

Originally Posted by cantdrv55

My wife is so against budgeting. She said it's because in order to maintain the budget, we'd have to track our expenses and I'm no good at it. In the past, I had been really poor at asking for and keeping my receipts so my expense tracking was spotty at best. However, I still feel we should have a budget even though I think we are pretty frugal and already save a huge chunk of our pay through a 401k and an employee stock purchase plan. There's always room for improvement though.

Do you have a budget and how do you stay within it?

to answer the original question, yes, and mostly.

If you don't want to keep track of expenses, why don't you go to the envelope method? For each category label an envelope and fill it with cash at the beginning of each time period with your budgeted amount. It has 2 big advantages. 1: Going to cash only generally means you spend less. 2: you don't have to keep track of individual transactions, just the total amount in the envelope you're interested in.

[Tishabet]

We have started to keep an actual "budget" in the last year using Mint.com, it's a really cool service and I recommend you check it out. You don't need to keep track of what you spent on what... Mint hooks into your account and does the analysis for you with surprising accuracy.

[TechnoViking]

I have a rough budget on a spreadsheet. All the monthly stuff that is predictable (mortgage, day care, utilities, trash, insurance, gym dues, gas, cell phone, etc.) are subtracted from my paycheck. 401K and another savings account is taken off the top.

So what's left over is X dollars, and it's reasonably consistent every month. I kind of keep track in my head about how much of X I am spending week to week, including any toy purchases or other unexpected expenses.

[lukeh]

Yes and no.

We tried it but my wife and I were at each others throats. She could never stay at or under the budget. The credit card bill would show $200 at Wal-Mart and she could never tell me what we spent it on. We drove each other nuts.

For this reason we switched plans. We both max our 401k's and ROTH IRAs. Then as an emergency fund we dollars cost average $500 a month into an equity income mutual fund. After that I could care less what she spends it on as long as we pay off the credit card at the end of each month. I'm happy because we are saving and she's happy because I'm not try to track her every trip to the store.

[grudk]

I budget, she busts it... and then some

[Dave L]

not a budget per se but investments, mortgage, car payments and other obligations get paid first. The remainder (not much) is used for other purchases like clothes or other less neccessary stuff. Anything left over is either saved into another account or put towards unpaid debt. We try to live reasonably and not go too crazy so it works out.