Budgets - Some questions

My mint budget has several things that account monthly for non-monthly purchases

It badically pretend-spends that money each month, even though the actual purchase may be a few months away


It can also carry over balances in each category if you go over one month and plan to cut back the next.

There really is no "entering" transactions


It's all done automatically if you tie in all of your accounts


At worst, I have to recategorize some of them but mint usually learns the category after once or twice.


Are you spending cash more? This would be a bigger pain I guess

Well...there's nothing wrong with that, but of course it requires more manual entry to keep up with the budget

I do 99% of my spending on cards

I'm great at setting up and formulating a good monthly budget


I am absolutely awful at following it




Since I set up my budget in mint about 6 months ago, I am 0 for 6

I'm guessing you leave a buffer in your checking account, for when you go over, so that you don't bounce checks / have debit card denied?

We have found that the method that consistently works for us is to just use cash and prepaid cards. Here is what we do, most of the time:

1) My entire check gets deposited into checking. Her check gets split between two savings accounts (regular savings, christmas club savings) and checking.

2) On pay day (we get paid 15th/last day) I go in and pay all "bills" that will be due between pay day and the next pay day (so utilities, mortgage, tuition, student loans, etc). I deduct this from the checkbook (yes, we still use a paper checkbook register)

3) On pay day, I go to the bank and withdraw in cash, two amounts - an amount for groceries and an amount for what we call miscellaneous - which is basically anything that's not a bill, not gas, and not groceries. We stick the money in two envelopes - one for groceries and one for misc. Anytime money comes out of the envelope, it gets replaced with a receipt from wherever we spent the cash. Deduct from checkbook.

4) On pay day, I load money onto two prepaid gift cards - we each keep one, and they are both for RaceTrac, and we use this to pay for all of our gas. Deduct from checkbook.

5) We have a credit card, but we only use it for "emergency" situations like a blown tire, unexpected medical bill that can't be handled with misc cash, etc. This is just to give us time to get to the savings account to pull the money needed for this issue.

6) We also have a seperate savings account tied to our checking account, where in the second half of the month, we transfer from checking to savings 1/2 of the amount needed for the kids tuition and mortgage payments. First half of the month, we transfer this back into the checking and use that along with another 1/2 from the first half check to make those payments. Basically it just allocates our expenses out over both paychecks.

Other people on here will talk about credit cards, points, miles, etc... but we have learned the hard way that those things don't work for us in our point in our lives. This works for us. Basically, the end result is we don't use our debit cards for day to day spending - we use cash.

For your mint categories, you could just manually make new ones that are more broad.

Mint has Restaurants, Alcohol, and Fast Food as categories or something like that.

I grouped the foods ones up, but kept alcohol separate because that's something I want to know about wit specificity.

I've been using the dave ramsey "every dollar counts". Kind of a pain in the arse. The "funds" tool doesn't work right & if you overspend in one area it doesn't account for it else where. You can have $100 "remaining" total but the your line item budget for food might show $600 "remaining".
I wouldn't say don't use it but be aware of it's limitations.

quote:

---

We each have our personal slush fund to spend as we see fit. Works well b/c I don't get bitched at for spending money on golf or dumb toys, and she doesn't ever get shite for shopping.

---

how much of your budget is this? I know I will barely use mine and the wife will blow through hers. I figure I am going to give an extra 10%, to set the stage that she gets more "fun money" than I do. But looking back at the last 6 months, she has 3 girls weekends, and two trips to visit her parents.

quote:

---

Yes, we spend a fair amount of cash. Maybe $500-600 a month in cash.

---

Mint could work for this.

We hardly ever use cash but have a "Cash & ATM" budget $200/mo. I typically take that out the first of the month and keep at the house. If one of us needs cash, we take some out of the pot.

Works great for us b/c we never use it all (if any)each month, so the cash builds up. Every few months use cash for a nice dinner or I'll give the wife cash for a mall trip. It's a good way to "splurge" and it not "hit" that budget.