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Budgeting, Spending And Saving

Discussion in 'General Discussions - USA & Canada' started by chaaral, Dec 20, 2017.

  1. chaaral

    chaaral Silver IL'ite

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    Hi ,
    how do you budget, spend and manage monthly expenses.
    Recently went out with my friend for shopping and she had envelopes for each of her kids and spent money from their envelopes and then used credit card for her items. as we were discussing another friend said she also does the same. i usually use my credit card to buy what ever i want, hubby uses his, we pay the cards and actually dont keep track of our monthly budget. so last 2 months tried various apps to keep track of our monthly spending but didn't work out well.
    How do you do it? do u note down all the monthly expenses.do u have a budget for each person in your family? or do u just spend as you wish.
    I buy few sets of clothes for each season at sale. then we dont go for shopping until we need something. but my friend buys monthly something or the other. and she gets it in good sale too as she visits mall often.
    so how do you manage? and whats your routine?
    Thanks!
     
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  2. happydheivanai

    happydheivanai Silver IL'ite

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    Usually v use to buy through credit card and at the end Of the the month we will analysis it ..and try to avoid the unnecessary expenses what we done on he previous month that’s all it will b easy to track and v know what is essential...taking from cover and monitoring it and all not easy for long term...
     
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  3. salad

    salad Gold IL'ite

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    Google about 50/20/30 rule. See if it works for you. Else get a % budget that fit for your family and stick to it.
     
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  4. aspha

    aspha Gold IL'ite

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    We use mint.com to monitor our expenses.
     
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  5. MalStrom

    MalStrom IL Hall of Fame

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    All our spending is on a credit card, so that we have a track. We allocate monthly amounts to various categories such as groceries, eating out and entertainment, etc. Once the month's allowance is done, no more of that activity till the next month.
    I almost never visit the mall and do almost all my shopping online. We only buy clothes, shoes, bags etc when we need to replace them so it is only 2-3 times a year and we try to wait for sales.
     
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  6. uma321

    uma321 Platinum IL'ite

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  7. chaaral

    chaaral Silver IL'ite

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    Thanks for all your inputs. yeah hubby checks the credit card statement and expenses but some of the bills we pay through bank acct, then some expenses are done by cash.
    i liked mint.com but hubby doesnt want to link it to bank acct etc.
     
  8. Change1

    Change1 New IL'ite

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    Start off with MS Excel. Make categories of your expenses (housing, grocery, school, utilities, etc) Have all your monthly expenses total for each category (from your credit card statements and bills etc). Have your monthly salary/income minus the total expenses and get the savings each month. Track like so for each month and withing 3 to 6 months you will have a better insight into where are your most expenditures and how you can minimize them. This simple technique will help you get started and later on you can use more professional sites. However be cautious with the sites as you will need to submit all your accounts and password to that site so it can gather all the information and prepare a monthly report for me. Very beneficial to have one site do it all, however I am always concerned about the security, meaning if your account is compromised then that would leak all your other accounts and passwords :anguished:.
     

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