Budgets - Some questions

the drawback to this budgeting is that it doesn't force to you to prioritize spending over time, just on a month to month basis.

The wife spends a ton of money on personal travel, and she has no clue that she is spending that much since we cut in other areas to enable this. I would just like her to be more deliberate on picking what she does.

eta: we don't need really need to do this, but we are trying to retire in 5 years. And we will need to do this in retirement, as there is less margin for error.

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.

Late to the party but I figured i'd share my Fiance and my's budgeting strategy. It's honestly worked very well for us. I will say that the most important thing when trying to budget or reach financial goals is to be on the same page. The lady and I both have common ideals when it comes to our money and we want the same thing for our financial state.

Our main goal when we started out was to save 6 months of expenses in our emergency fund, and we realized there's no way we'd be able to do that in a reasonable amount of time without a solid budget. So here's how we set everything up.

We have left our separate banks, and joined at one bank (cap one for those interested). We opened a Joint checking, Joint savings, and two separate checkings.
Each bi-week, we have the same amount direct deposited into our separate checking accounts. This money is our personal money, and we can do with it whatever we please. I can't see her account and she can't see mine.
The rest of our checks are deposited into the joint checking account. This account pays for everything else. Savings, Retirement, gas, transportation costs, bills, budget items like dining out, entertainment, groceries, etc. etc.

We also have 4 Cap One 360 accts that act as savings accounts for Christmas money, Vacation fund, "House stuff" and rental property savings. We set up automatic biweekly transfers to our emergency fund and the 360 accts.

It's easy to do. Having that joint acct makes life simple since we can both see where our money is going and both be on the same page while the separate checking accounts still allow us freedom to spend as we wish. It's a good system and I recommend it.

I can email anyone the spreadsheet we use. I like it a little better than mint because I'm forced to keep it current, whereas mint can allow you to either not check it or just assume it's "Budgeting for you." A spreadsheets has been the best method in keeping us accountable!