How Do You Budget? (not poker related) (1 Viewer)

[moechar]

Just curious as it seems there are many well financially established people here, do you set a budget/track your expenses? If so, how? Do you use a financial advisor? Do you use one of those budgeting mobile apps? Track every transaction yourself and have a spreadsheet? Something else?

Just been wanting to track my spending lately just for research purposes and am curious to know what others do.

 

[warma]

I used to manage our joint expenses in Quicken and recorded all the credit card transactions individually. Then I realized I didn’t do anything with it, so I shifted to an Excel spreadsheet to give me the long view. Then I realized that most everything beyond the credit card is either relatively consistent or non-discretionary, so I just track credit card spending, looking for anomalies. I eliminated credit card debt decades ago and always pay off monthly. We’re pretty good savers and spenders. We live below our means, save for the kids in private school, and have established a solid savings account for emergencies, etc. For really large one-off purchases, we create a target amount, save/set aside the money and then go from there. Poker chips come from my separate account - we each get an allowance from the joint account and I’ll save/spend on things I want.

 

[TonZaga]

My wife and I use EveryDollar. They have an app and website that sync together.

 

[detroitdad]

Just curious as it seems there are many well financially established people here, do you set a budget/track your expenses? If so, how? Do you use a financial advisor? Do you use one of those budgeting mobile apps? Track every transaction yourself and have a spreadsheet? Something else?

Just been wanting to track my spending lately just for research purposes and am curious to know what others do.

Colleen handles it. I'm pretty easy. Roof over our head, check, food on the table, check, stocked bourbon cabinet, check...........

 

[Irish]

Spreadsheets with copy/paste data input from credit cards & bank accounts.

 

[detroitdad]

Spreadsheets with copy/paste data input from credit cards & bank accounts.

 

[moechar]

Spreadsheets with copy/paste data input from credit cards & bank accounts.

How do you get the data in a copy/pastable format?

 

[louBdub]

The best budget is living within ones means.

Find that budget, and you’ll smile more.

 

[Irish]

How do you get the data in a copy/pastable format?

Nearly every financial institution has the option to export a statement (or data within a date range) to an excel or a *.csv (comma separated value) file, which can then be copy/pasted into excel. Formats can sometimes be a PITA but there are lots of workarounds.

 

[CraigT78]

I don't budget.

I pay myself first - 401k, IRAs, Employee stock purchase plan and brokerage account

Pay the kids second - fund the college funds each month

Pay the tax man 3rd - money saved every month for property taxes

4th - Pay off the credit card each month

5th - whatever is left over, drop into the high yield savings account and fund brokerage account whenever a certain threshold is met.

When we still had a house payment, that was 1b.

I used the managed services in my 401k and my wife uses a family financial advisor for her IRA. I self manage my IRA and the brokerage account.

@inca911 has a great thread about this stuff - I'd link it, but I'm too lazy to find it.

 

[moechar]

I don't budget.

I pay myself first - 401k, IRAs, Employee stock purchase plan and brokerage account

Pay the kids second - fund the college funds each month

Pay the tax man 3rd - money saved every month for property taxes

4th - Pay off the credit card each month

5th - whatever is left over, drop into the high yield savings account and fund brokerage account whenever a certain threshold is met.

When we still had a house payment, that was 1b.

I used the managed services in my 401k and my wife uses a family financial advisor for her IRA. I self manage my IRA and the brokerage account.

@inca911 has a great thread about this stuff - I'd link it, but I'm too lazy to find it.

I was wondering if there was a thread I'll try to find it!

 

[Taghkanic]

Before the start of each year, I revisit a spreadsheet I set up a long time ago. I use this not to track every little expense, but to make sure I have a good idea of what my budget should be for a wide variety of items, so that I live within my means.

This includes fields for all of my anticipated expenses, as well as an estimate of my income for the year. For each field (e.g. dining out, gasoline, health and car insurance, etc.) I start with either a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly amount, whichever is most appropriate, then compute the other time values.

Some expenses are pretty easy to estimate (say, take an average my broadband bill from the past three years, then add 5%). Others are ballpark numbers, such as a yearly budget for home repairs/improvement. These may fluctuate year-to-year, but if I pay attention to how I’m doing on a regular basis, I can adjust to even things out.

As I’m making financial decisions all year, having these breakdowns in the back of my mind gives a clearer picture of how much I can spend while staying on-budget. If I know that the monthly “allowance” I’m giving myself for taking the gal out to dinner is X, and we splurge on a Saturday night dinner which is X/2, that means we need to not go out as much the rest of the month... or go on some much cheaper dates for a while.

For the easily-anticipated expenses which don’t vary a lot, I don’t bother logging specific purchases. I just carry over values throughout the year which assume that I’m on-budget, unless something radically changes. I’m not going to make an entry every time I gas up the car; instead, I’ll take a look at the end of the year how many miles I drove, and see whether the number needs adjustment for next year.

Once in a while, something does change significantly—say, during the pandemic, when we essentially stopped going to restaurants completely, bought way more groceries, and only occasionally got take-out.

It’s only when there’s some major unexpected expense/purchase that I go back into the spreadsheet to adjust, and figure out what I need to do to get things back in line, either with day-to-day or long-term expenses.

The other main check on this is that I keep a tally of my cash on hand, as well as investments, on a roughly monthly basis, so that I can see what is happening to my net worth. If something looks out of whack—I budgeted to add a certain amount to my savings over the course of the year, but my worth is going down—I can then delve into the reasons why, and see where my budgeting is off. It’s important in that context of course to distinguish between market fluctuations from investments vs. going over budget on expenses vs. income.

That’s a long-winded way of saying: Unless things are really tight, it should be good enough to know generally whether you are living within your means and meeting your financial goals, without making yourself crazy entering every single receipt into an app.

 

[quintooo]

I use a pretty simple excel sheet. The first sheet is a "summary" where I track my networth in investments, so 401k, IRA, brokerage, etc. and an overview of my expenses. The next sheets, I track my credit card bills every statement (so this figure is a month behind) to make sure I'm spending within my means. Also track my investment/savings account to make sure I'm in line with my financial goals. I NEVER go into credit card debt, pay it off as soon as the statement comes in.

I automatically take money out of my paycheck to invest in 401k and IRA (max out both up to employer contribution, so about $26k a year). Health insurance is included in this.

Whatever is left after those contributions is my "take home." I then list my fixed expenses, so student loans, car insurance, gym membership, rent, gas (estimated), etc. Subtract that figure, and the rest is my "post expenses take home."

Because I'm still young, I prioritize fun first, lol. I take out $x amount from that figure every month and put it into my "for fun" bank. This is for hanging out, drinks, entertainment, poker, poker chips, etc. In my case, I keep poker separate from my other fun. I keep a "poker bankroll" that is $x amount, and if it falls under, I transfer money from fun to poker. This also applies to my "for fun" bank, unless I know I'm saving up for a purchase (poker chips). If either is over a certain amount, I transfer the extra into my brokerage.

I take out a separate $x amount every month to save for travel, which is put into a HYSA.

I try to be flexible with my fun and travel bank. If I know I want to travel, I'll try to not spend so much on fun and put the extras into my travel bank. Or if I want to buy chips, I'll withdraw from my travel bank, etc.

Whatever's left is "post fun take home" which all goes into a brokerage account. I'm about 80% SPX and 20% speculative, which isn't the smart thing to do, but being on PCF, I'm clearly not the smartest with money.

A smart person, especially someone young like us in our 20s, would probably aggressively save/invest to let compounding interest work instead of budgeting so much for fun, but you're only young once yadda yadda is my belief.

This is what my spreadsheet summary looks like:

 

[Venturalvn]

When I was getting out of debt and onto my feet financially I was using You Need A Budget (often shorted to YNAB on financial threads/forums). This was when they had a one-time fee for purchase (it was worth it) and the mobile app.

Not sure what it's like nowadays, as my usage was years ago. I do know that now it's monthly subscription, which I hate, and I have no idea what the UI or functionality looks like compared to past. With that said, out of all of the programs out there this was truly a notch above for budgeting.

 

[tallsbutler]

When I was getting out of debt and onto my feet financially I was using You Need A Budget (often shorted to YNAB on financial threads/forums). This was when they had a one-time fee for purchase (it was worth it) and the mobile app.

Not sure what it's like nowadays, as my usage was years ago. I do know that now it's monthly subscription, which I hate, and I have no idea what the UI or functionality looks like compared to past. With that said, out of all of the programs out there this was truly a notch above for budgeting.

I’m a loyal YNAB user going on 8 years. We love it!

 

[Taghkanic]

P.S. There is no poker chip line item on my spreadsheet. That’s strictly off the books ;^}

P.P.S. When I was first out of school, for a couple of years I *did* maniacally track every expense, no matter how small, in pocket-sized booklets I got the stationery store. (This was pre-smartphone.)

It was total overkill, but I think it had long-term benefits well after I stopped: (a) becoming super aware of what things cost; and (b) seeing how expenses can add up if you aren’t disciplined.

 

[LeLe]

Both my wife and I have financial backgrounds, so we are very handle when it comes to budgeting / tracking of expense.

Basically, we used a joint bank account and excel / receipts & statement to keep track of it.

Similarly, that is also how I keep track of Chips/poker expense/income as well.

 

[Poker Zombie]

When I moved out of my parent's house in the late 1980's, I had practically nothing. Some clothes, a bed, and a mother telling me that if I left now, I would be a complete failure.

So I did what I could, with a job (paying $14,000/yr). I built a budget on a sheet of scrap paper. Home computers weren't really a thing back then, so pen and paper it was. I measured every dollar I spent (rounding up). Just like @Taghkanic, this process allowed me to understand what things cost, and I never wondered "where does the money go". I knew. I was already one up on my mother.

Next step was to figure out how much money I had in the whole world. $1,507. It's insane to think that all the money I had then, was less than what some people pay for a rack of chips today. I divided that money into each category that I was spending money in, and that was how much I had to spend. Sure, sometimes a category would dip into the red. I had one category called "Emergency" whose purpose was to catch those unexpected expenses. A good budget isn't a dictator telling you when you can or can't spend your money. It's a set of guidelines set up by you. Feel free to stray - but if you stray too often, you need to readjust your guidelines, and have someplace to take up the slack.

The budget has changed in many ways over the years. My earliest budget had a category for "Music", because music was such an important part of my teenage identity. I no longer have the "Emergency" fund. Each category is well above zero, so if I spot that super-special bourbon, I can pick up as many bottles as the retailer will allow. If that pushes the "Wine and Spirits" category red, there are enough "extra" dollars in other categories that I'm not going broke, and the budget can be adjusted at the end of the quarter if necessary.

To this day, we still track every dollar spent on pen and paper, and still have every budget back to that first scrap of paper (so I am positive about that $1507 I had to my name). Pen and paper may feel archaic, but we actually enjoy tracking everything. It's like a game, and the paper is our score sheet.

We're winning.

Just so you don't think I'm some old luddite with my pen and paper, I also have a consolidated (end of quarter) budget on an Excel spreadsheet that allows me to see trends and adjust for seasonal trends. I can also and graph them, because Excel is fun.

 

[Old State]

My Mother lied to me when I was a teenager and told me most people don’t have credit card debt and only take loans for a house and a car. It stuck with me and I payed cash for everything until I was married.

My wife manages day to day expenses. We spend 95% of our money on two credit cards where we get travel points. They get payed off 100% every month. I buy my company stock at a discount and fully fund my 401K. All other retirement and college funds investments are managed by a financial adviser.

Since I got my first credit card I have never bought anything on it that I couldn’t comfortably afford to buy with cash. I hope to impress this on my kids.

We live way below our means. I splurge on a few things but always search for the best deals and financially the best way to acquire them. I’m not cheap by any means. For example, I wear very nice suits for work and shoes. My wife has nice jewelry handbags etc. We take great vacations and eat out at nice restaurants often. I just buy everything on sale. We use points for a lot of travel. My kids are pretty spoiled and have the best sports equipment you can get….but I get baseball stuff at cost through my aunts business.

We live in a nice remodeled and up to date house but it’s the same house we bought 18 years ago when we were married and making 3x less than we are now. A larger house would be convenient but I’m hesitant to move as our mortgage is almost paid off.

The dumbest financial expense we have are relatively nice cars.