Budgeting system I use to manage my money. — The Little Dollar
Have you ever wondered how the PF bloggers actually manage and budget their money? The “secret system to success” (not that I feel one really exists :P) Today I want to share my system for managing my money from my earned income job, my investments and how I have setup a financial plan for my future.
My hope is this can inspire and drive my readers to more focused and designed financial list of goals in your life. (yes, I consider you a reader even if you are new here.) My main focus is to help millennials reach their financial goals!
Without a long-winded introduction, we can get right into the meat of my budget.
Ill first start with Monthly tracking systems. This is to see how much money comes in and how much goes out during each month. This will help me to determine if my budget is out of wack or not.
I start with paycheck tracking which you can see down below and double check with monthly tracking. I start by monthly tracking in terms that I build the system first before I use paycheck tracking. Then I reevaluate at the end of each month.
Most of my evaluation is based around if I over spent based on percent’s. This is by comparing month to month along with target ranges for my expected numbers. I am not much of a frugal person, so I find that allowing myself time to spend money on certain things is great.
This is what makes things easy for me. I plug in how much I got paid and spend and track what I need to pay. This is based on a principle of cash flow. I never run out of money if I setup my bills to work with my paychecks, some I purposely pay 2 weeks early just to keep my budget in place.
This works best for when I see I have over spent on that paychecks allowed amount of money for food. Which happens a lot. I like to eat when I am away from home for 16 hours a day. (this is my big thing that hurts me. Once you find yours you can fix it by accepting it and skewing your numbers to fit what is you or cut your spending back to get even. I hate being cheap when it comes to things and I have decided to cut back on other areas.)
Paycheck tracking works well to see if you underspent as well. If you have you can add that cash to your buffer funds or investing.
My favorite thing about personal finance is investing. I even budget for it. I track this by using my own investment budget. I budget in $150 and spend it on various investments. It can be interesting
To help me track these things I use J moneys Net worth tracking budget. It focuses on paycheck to paycheck budgeting and allows extra budgets along with a Net Worth calculator.
Net worth calculations
I use a Net Worth tracker that allows me to take my assets and minus my debts. It evens tracks last months to this month. This is done by a simple math problem. Assets minus Liabilities equals Net Worth.
I include my Cash accounts and even my purchases of Silver coins as you can see in my latest Net Worth Update.
I do all this by using a spreadsheet. It’s really cool.
The specific spreadsheet (Budgetsaresexy)
It is the first one under this link ( Budgets are Sexy templates) and use “Financial Snapshot and budget” by J money himself.
When I built this plan, I made it for my low cash flow coming in. Having $1200 income from an earned income job that I am not passionate about nor wake up to desire going to, I had to build a system that works. Paycheck to Paycheck budgeting has been my favorite. While I don’t live paycheck to paycheck I do track things in that way. I setup my jobs direct deposit to put $100 each check into savings and pay the rest to checking.
This allows me to save $200–300 a month without even budgeting that. Its kind of like my blind form of Passive earned income. (like that’s a word)
I suggest you work this in your favor by using the system to work either monthly or paycheck based. This will guide your money in ways you could only dream of without a budget.
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Originally published at https://thelittledollar.com on July 3, 2019.
