OK, whi is the budget queen? or.....HELP me please!!!

[Magoo]

DH makes a good salary, and I am lucky enough to be able to stay home ,but we never seem to have any $ to put in savings even though we should have extra left over every mth. Can someone hold my hand and help me do like a budget bootcamp kind of thing? We are leaking $ somewhere and I want to be able to save it instead of lose it to wherever it is going. Anyone want to take me on? LOL

[Mom2Steen]

The first thing to do is track your spending - EVERY PENNY - for a month. If you have a program like MS Money or Quicken you can have as many categories as you like and even split single transactions between categories (for example - $78 at the grocery store with $65 being groceries and $13 being toiletries).

Also, make a list of every bill - mortgage/rent, car payment, insurance, utilities, tuition, subscriptions, etc.. Add all of these up plus what you spend on groceries, entertainment, clothing, books, copays/medicine, etc and see how much you should have left.

There is no magic to budgeting, just honesty, thoroughness and arithmetic. lol

[Mom2Steen]

Forgot to add - You should always put money into savings/investments off the top (assuming yor budget shows funds available for these things). So either have money direct deposited into savings or transfer it over yourself as soon as DH's pay hits the bank. You can't spend what isn't there in your checking acct.

[Bluemoonjo]

I do ours like this. I have a "bill" calender, each week on payday I have wrote in what needs to be payed...

Some stuff is not wrote in ... like house/car taxes/insurance because we have it set up where they are due when our tax refund comes back.

*Week 1
Phone bill - pay then
Eletric bill - put money back
Gas- car
DH money - he gets allowance to use for work things - like a tool that needs replaced, food if hes out of town... he can save it or blow it but has to deal with it when it runs out LOL
Food
Baby money - The last couple months I've been putting gas money back for dr visits, and for dh to drive back and forth when the baby is born...hospital/dr is a hour drive away

*Week 2
Eletric bill - and I pay it this week
Credit card bill - pay then
Gas - car
DH Money
Food
Other stuff - laundry soap,dish soap,paper products ect

*Week 3
House Payment - put money back
Credit card - pay then
Gas - car
Dh money
Food
baby money

Week 4
House Payment - pay then
Water bill - pay then
Gas car
dh money
food
Pet food

Thats the main plan. If there is extraLOL money it goes to "saving" another spot in the checkbook.... and is used for other stuff, kids clothes,shoes,dr copay,fabric LOL, ect

If there is a birthday/holiday that month I squeeze it in somewhere...sometimes starting a few months ahead.

Some times there is a week 5 ... its used to catch up on bills I couldn't get all of before, an unexpected repair, car plates.