how is your budget set up at home?

do you have a spending limit? a weekly allowance for you and DH?

How do you do it!?

my budget that i go by is based on pay checks. DH gets paid the 1st and 15th, SO for every check here's the plan:
$75 total on gas (or less, if less then i can spend it on whatever)
$50 grocery (mind you its just me and gavin right now)
$50 total for gavin
$25 for misc.

i hope that helps. sometimes i dont even leave the house because i know i will end up spending money even on stupid stuff that i dont really need, so maybe sometimes just hang out at home with the babe. as far as spending money on gavin goes, i stockpile up his food with Qs, either going to save-a-lot, big lots, or kroger & all if i have to... and for diapers ive stockpiled them from cvs so its easy not to spend a lot on him... well take care<3

Hi,
I wish mine were that simple. I use Quicken software and it will generate a budget for me. But I cannot keep it because I cannot control my husband. At any rate, I try to keep gas down to $120 a month (two people, two cars, a motorcycle), groceries at $320 or less a month, and then pay all the other bills like utilities, mortgage, etc. I wish they hadn't invented credit cards because that's how we end up over spending. We pay off the balance on the credit cards every month, so I'm not stuck paying any interest, but we do end up floating some expenses on credit cards until the next paycheck. So I suppose, we are one paycheck away from carrying a balance and falling into the credit card trap. I don't want to steal the post, so I will pose a question in a new thread on credit cards.

Great question!

This has nothing to do with a budget, but I just saw you are from Sandusky, OH danielephant. I'm from Toledo.

We use an envelope system and pay cash for everything (except online house bills). We get paid once a month and divide into categories- We use a zero budget system so that EVERY dollar is named (including "blow money")- We put money away for gifts, childcare, travel, etc. in addition to the normal "baby", grocery, etc.)

We are pretty serious about this budget stuff. But because of this, we live debt free!!! It is wonderful to not have a house payment! We are able to give and save about 40% of our monthly income. It WORKS, even though it takes some discipline It's worth it!

We started by each getting $3 a day to spend. We left the house with ONLY $3 in cash. If you didn't spend it all we put it in a jar for groceries. You have to be very strict when it comes to budgeting. We have paid everything off and have a nice stash in savings. The begining of every month seems to be tough since all of our bills come out then, but we put 2 of DH checks in savings and 2 go for bills (he gets paid weekly). Sometimes you have to take a little out like this month we had to. We bought a new car (with cash saved) so we had to pay taxes on that and taxes on our house were due and I had 2 Dr. bills and Gage had 1 Dr. bill and DH wrecked new car. So this month was tough but we only had to take out $200 from savings and our economic stimulis check went into savings. So, not to bad.

By getting almost everything for free! No budget needed! No, I try to spend about $50 a week on groceries and what not for our family of 5. The rest of my shopping has to be for frees or at CVS.

I just wing it. My mother always yells at me that I should have it written down but all our expenses are covered each month and we have some to play with and use towards "life" expenses (oil changes, home improvement etc) plus an emergency fund for 6 months.

It works for us but we are pretty conservative with money (well, only on some things)

Dh gets paid every other week. I make up the budget based on 2 of his paychecks. I put the necessary amount in for each bill, groceries and gas (based on 4 weeks' worth of food and gas). Whatever is left over is what I call "spending money," and it could go to prescriptions, car stuff, fun stuff, etc. We haven't been able to save much since we are only on one income, but in preparation for me to stay home, we put a good amount of money in savings and CDs. I had planned to take out a few hundred a month from savings, but we haven't had to do that more than twice since I started saving $$ here at AFC

hubby is a personal banker .. so he does all the budgeting for us! thankfully. i would probably end up missing a bill, because i saw something i thought we needed ;x

but he has a entire paper, dedicated to what we have to pay each month..and he marks off what we budget, when we pay, and what we ACTUALLY spent. for example..we budget $250 for gas bill throughtout the winter, and we may have to pay $210...we have a surplus at the end of the month, and we know where it came from. same thing if we over spend on something, we know where we messed up.

we budget $250 for food..and BEFORE cvs and coupons we budgeted $225 for hba+baby stuff. and of course all the normal bills. and credit cards.

i hope that helps. sometimes i dont even leave the house because i know i will end up spending money even on stupid stuff that i dont really need, so maybe sometimes just hang out at home with the babe. as far as spending money on gavin goes, i stockpile up his food with Qs, either going to save-a-lot, big lots, or kroger & all if i have to... and for diapers ive stockpiled them from cvs so its easy not to spend a lot on him... well take care<3[/quote]


I am the same way! i just lock myself in! !

These are some great ideas!!!!!!!!!! the 3 dollars a day thing is great! My hubby is our down fall sometimes he runs to get milk and comes home with candy! GRRRRRRRRRR! !

But right now i am writing out every thing that we spend in a month and at the end of each month i have been breaking it down into categories and that way i can see where we are spending money that we really could be saving and then i can see how much we have spent to date and what was OOP ect. so far it is keeping me on the strait and narrow! !

I am trying to keep our spending ---Not counting bills under $20 a day that is with groceries, going out to eat, movies, baby, anything other than bills---so far...we are a bit over budget ... but i will be cracking down this week!

we do the envelope system. We also are using Dave Ramseys budget/debt plan.

I don't have a buget, I pay the house payment every month and DH weekly paycheck pays power, cable,cell phone and fills the cars so we divide what's left to spend save etc. and of course lunch money for kids.