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I have been trying to maintain a monthly budget but cannot effectively count everything that is going in and out (especially with being married). Trying to keep every receipt and such is just not practical.
I do count every penny spent, but I don't ever use cash if I can help it. I use a cash-back credit card for purchases, and I have automatic deductions from my checking account for utility payments and such.
Every expenditure shows up either in my checking account or in my credit card account (same bank for both), which I check online. I record my expenditures on an Excel spread sheet every few days from what's posted to my accounts online.
At the end of the month I total everything up. By looking at six-month averages, I know if I need to make changes to the budget, or changes to my spending patterns.
I count every penny. However, if you just can't do that, you can always use the envelope method of budgeting. You take cash and place it into envelopes marked for the purpose. You spend it until it is gone and then you must stop spending. (rent money goes into "rent" envelope, grocery money goes int "grocery" envelope, gasoline money goes into "gasoline" envelope, and so on.)
I have been trying to maintain a monthly budget but cannot effectively count everything that is going in and out (especially with being married). Trying to keep every receipt and such is just not practical.
How do you guys do it?
I do it by using broad categories. I do not keep every receipt. If I withdraw $40 for gas, I set it aside to buy gas, and I count it as $40 for gas. If I spend $100 at the grocery store, it's just groceries. I do not try to split out the $10 for toilet paper and shampoo.
The point of budgeting is to plan ahead to cover your expenses, not to create tedious "busy work" for yourself.
I have no budget nor have I ever. You will have some fixed expenditures (like rent, car insurance, cell phone plan, utility bills, etc.). That sets a floor which are your indirect operating costs so to speak. After that you have variables but necessities like food, etc. These are akin to your direct operating costs.
Keep in mind this isn't government. You don't get bonus points for spending your entire line item allotment.
I have been trying to maintain a monthly budget but cannot effectively count everything that is going in and out (especially with being married). Trying to keep every receipt and such is just not practical.
How do you guys do it?
To make your budget effective you NEED to count every penny. All those "small" purchases here and there count the most.
If you can't effectively monitor your cash spending, you might need to use your credit and debit cards. You will get a monthly statement of every purchase you made. That way you can see exactly where your money is going. For the next few months you should create a spread sheet, and enter all your expenses, then track your spending habits. After a while you will know what happened with your earnings, then adjust your budget accordingly and stick to that.
You need to divide your earnings into several categories: fixed bills, food, gas, clothing, household expenses, medical care, emergency fund, savings, etc.
There are many easy, user friendly budget spread sheets online.
BTW: I do not use any automatic bill pay features. You need to review your bills every time. At least when the amount is different compared to previous month.
I have an odd way of doing this... I put away over 20% in savings off the bat.
I pay for items that come up monthly (electricity, water, etc).
I budget for trips, etc.
The rest I simply "blow". I don't try to budget to the fine details... I'd fail.
Most important, I don't go over and I don't use credit cards that I can't pay off by the end of the month (actually pay mine off weekly).
I keep a healthy emergency fund... if something comes up, I simply pay for it. I don't worry.
I think once you budget and you understand your household and where money flows, you "know" if you are overspending. With all the apps now, there is no reason why you can't monitor spending on a daily basis. I pay my bills via phone now...
I have one bank that I pull all other accounts into and monitor all money in and out.
I also have an imaginary "baseline" that I don't want to get below.... if I go below that, I'd have to dig into my emergency fund after I spending a bit more below that baseline (in other words, there is a cushion before the emergency fund). Once I start hitting close to that line, I ease up on spending.
I basically do blow some money though... for example, I got a mustang last year... every month I was buying stuff for it. This year, I'm into guns... buying guns and ammo. Stuff I really don't need, to be honest. But when you are putting almost $2000 a month away for savings, what the hell... I feel like I can live a little and enjoy myself (I've always been a saver).
Based on my parents and other family, I have 20 to 25 good years left in me for being highly active and traveling, shooting, hiking, etc. After that, I'll more than likely live another 10 or 15 years.
I'll have five sources of steady income in retirement years so I'm not worried about running out. I set things up in case SS and/or my pension goes up in smoke.... while I'll "feel it" if I lose those two, I won't go hungry or go into the poor house.
If you want to use only cash, carry a specific amount with you. Know how much you have then deduct what you have left over from what you started with. Also keep receipts. My parents only use cash and that is what they do and they keep weekly tabs in a notebook, they go over their budget for 30 minutes or so after church on Sunday's, once a week. Me and my wife use a credit card and keep tabs of everything online. All of my billing is done online as well. We keep an excel file for our monthly budget to keep tabs on various accounts and expenses. We go over the budget once a month. But we are pretty much on the same page, so it works out well.
I recommend going over the budget frequently with your spouse so you guys can stay on the same page. Make it a weekly meeting. There is tons of great advice on this forum to keep a tight budget. If you and your spouse have the desire, you will figure out a way.
Edit: We keep all receipts, mostly in case we ever get audited (we are self employed), but one way to do it is by have multiple boxes labeled such as; groceries, eating out, clothes, entertainment, gas, etc. They don't have to be terribly organized, once a week or once a month go through add them up, staple them together and write on the top receipt the total amount. This is for if you ever have to revisit spending for whatever reason. Then throw those each month into larger boxes labeled the same with for annual keeping.
There isn't a right or wrong to this. You have to do some research, learn your options, try a few and decide to keep one that works best for you.
I don't have the patience or the true need to count every penny. I control the assets and resources for 4 people and it would drive me nuts to make categories and dollar amounts for each of them.. just too many variables...
When we were simply saving without an agenda I had a percentage or a dollar amount that I wanted to save. I didn't care about how much I was spending as much as how much I was saving. Some people call this the "pay yourself first" method, or something like that. The idea is that you get the savings out of the way right when you get your paycheck and then what's left is left. That worked out fine, but it honestly didn't maximize my savings potential.
Then about a year ago we had the concrete goal of paying off our mortgage ASAP (which ended up being 26 years early). It changed my perspective of focusing on saving a set amount to spending a set amount. From the outside it doesn't look like a big difference, but it was actually a big shift, one that required constant monitoring. While I didn't count the pennies per se, I questioned if I really absolutely needed to spend each and every penny. If the answer was "yes" I then questioned if I could substitute the purchase with something else... could I ask my facebook gifting group for something to "gift" me with the needed/desired item? (every week for the first 2.5 months of 2016 I got at least $10-20 dollars of free food from the group... I also received clothing, athletic gear, tools, toys, etc). I went pretty crazy with this.. I mean, there were several winter weekends where I arranged for us to stay at home because I looked at the forecast and the weather was crummy and I refused to buy extra clothing that I knew we'd use just a few times (saving us at least a couple hundred) or I'd wait until fate and divine providence kicked in and I was able to get the items for free. This behavior, repeated hourly, daily and weekly, for months was actually incredibly satisfying from a spiritual point as it was from a financial perspective. I truly felt that I got *exactly* what I needed, when I needed it and it made me feel like "fate" if not purposeful intervention, was truly at play here (it felt that way... not saying it was really the case ). In the end we were spending less than $1000 a month on everything outside of mortgage, utilities and insurances, which meant that our savings rate went from our typical 20-30% to 50-60%. I really liked to combine this approach with the envelope method. It resulted that I frequently had extra money in my envelope at the end of the week which I would most often use as gift money for my children or their friends if they had parties to attend.
Right now I am in a state of transition... we are only recovering from paying off the mortgage a few months ago and now my husband is starting a new job. Our finances are going to be very complicated since we are going to have a signifiant pay increase coupled with a significant relocation (China). In many ways I deprived myself to get the mortgage paid off and I'm literally paying for it now (ex:I developed plantar fascistitis because I refused to buy new sneakers for a year... really bad when your job requires brisk walking for 5 hours a day! Now I have to reduce my walking to heal and I bought new shoes today). I'm going to give our savings rate a rest for several months and once I see where we are at with spending and disposable income I"m pretty sure we'll return to the first method (pay yourself first). We'll decide on a particular savings amount, deduct it first and not worry about the spending. At least for awhile... I'm pretty flexible and I just work with the circumstances.. and circumstances change!
So my advice: Try out a few things and stay open. Something may work and then not work. Maybe you need to do something different for awhile and that's okay too. The point is just keep moving in the direction you want to move in. The speed in which you travel my go slow, speed up, go slow again and whatnot, but what's important is that you're making progress!
Also how does your better half participate in this? My husband is pretty awesome in that he lets me tell him what we can and can't afford. I really do have nearly all the financial control in our relationship... most of the time it's great For my part I do a great job of balancing all our needs. I haven't taken advantage of the trust he's given me. I think it's made all the difference in reaching our financial goals.
There is an easier way. Look at your bank statement. Pay miscellaneous things in cash. You will see your withdraw in your bank statement. Everything else there's Master Card.
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). Trying to keep every receipt and such is just not practical.
). In the end we were spending less than $1000 a month on everything outside of mortgage, utilities and insurances, which meant that our savings rate went from our typical 20-30% to 50-60%. I really liked to combine this approach with the envelope method. It resulted that I frequently had extra money in my envelope at the end of the week which I would most often use as gift money for my children or their friends if they had parties to attend. 
