My wife and I often get asked how we manage our budget on a practical level. It is all well and good to have a piece of paper somewhere telling you how much money you are supposed to spend each month, but it is much more difficult to actually manage to that budget. There are many ways this can be done. Mint.com‘s budget system will track all of your spending categories and can even alert you when you go over budget. Some people do this manually with a spreadsheet or by keeping all of their receipts. We use an envelope budget. We pull cash each paycheck and put that money into envelopes.
These envelopes correspond to various categories of our spending and when the envelope is empty we are out of money for that particular category. If there is no money in the “Eating out” envelope we eat at home. Or at least we should, we aren’t perfect. Using this method makes all the money spent more tangible, you think more about each decision to spend. It also helps us to ensure we don’t go over our budgets because in theory we shouldn’t be using our debit card, where spending is much easier to lose track of .
These are from the Google play store. Sorry I don’t use iOS but there must be some out there?
How do you manage to your budget? Are there any good apps you can recommend? Tell us in the comments below.
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