How do you budget?

I use an excel spreadsheet.
It's mostly to get a picture of where the "gaps" are and where I could be saving more money
I get paid, pay my bills(including savings) and then petrol and groceries are pay-as-you-go
 
I use an excel spreadsheet, with a nice little pie chart that shows me where my money is going, and how much of my salary actually goes to that amount.
 
A quick and simple way to do this would be to sign up at https://www.pastelmymoney.co.za/Default.aspx
You can import your current bank statements and it will do the rest for you. Spend some time editing and renaming the usual debit orders, etc, etc.
All of this for free, unless you would want to pay for an automated process which involves an auto import from your bank.
 
I get paid on the 25th which is usually when I pay rent. However I let all my debit orders go off on the 30th because you never know if your salary might be paid in late or whatever the case. Never had to deal with a bounced debit order.
 
Excel spreadsheet based upon a financial ledger. Been doing it for 9 years. I can track back all my expenses, also use to to budget yearly and work out scenarios eg buy a new car, house.
 
Macethy said:
I get paid on the 25th which is usually when I pay rent. However I let all my debit orders go off on the 30th because you never know if your salary might be paid in late or whatever the case. Never had to deal with a bounced debit order.
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I usually go by knowing what'll debit me. However, when I signed up for my life insurance, the tools debited me a month before the agreed debit date and I had nothing in my account.

I was upset - they didn't care. But Sub-Standard Bank got R130ish from me because of that.
 
moegoe said:
A quick and simple way to do this would be to sign up at https://www.pastelmymoney.co.za/Default.aspx
You can import your current bank statements and it will do the rest for you. Spend some time editing and renaming the usual debit orders, etc, etc.
All of this for free, unless you would want to pay for an automated process which involves an auto import from your bank.
Click to expand...

My budget was also done using excel spreadsheets since 2009 and it has been working great for me.
Thanx for the link, moegoe - I have registered a free acount already to check it out and so far it is a great online budgeting tool! Time for a change!
 
MKFrost said:
We work on a 12 month budget due to the nature of my income i.e. not regular in amounts and or time.

So towards the end of the year I usually make one large withdrawal and or many smaller ones and this is split into two parts. The first part is stashed into a good interest bearing account i.e. Capitec. All fixed monthly expenses are then paid in advance for the year from this account. We however only pay those where we get a good discount in advance, the rest just goes off monthly from this account by debit order meaning that we still get relatively good interest on the balance.

70% of the second part is split between my wife and I and go into our separate personal accounts. The other 30% is held in reserve for unplanned expenses and or to plug any holes until such time as I can bring funds over [usually 5 days].

Any large purchases, i.e. anything exceeding 2 months 'pay', like for example a new vehicle is planned for a year in advance and the necessary funds for that is then included in the next years withdrawals.

What ever is left in any of our accounts come end of the year is transferred directly to our savings/investments and we start all over.
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when I grow up I want to do this:love:
 
mr_norris said:
Would you mind sharing how what you invest in? I understand if you'd rather not though :)
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I've got two managed investments one through Alexander Forbes which is basically my RA from previous company and then another through Old Mutual as well as a regular RA with them.

Then I also pay my home loan at 150% of the actual instalment rate which is another form of investment as I completely offset the interest I would have incurred by paying it off in less than 10 years.

Then I have some self managed ETF stuff through SATRIX and will probably add their new international Unit Trusts option in the near future if it wasn't such a paperwork ball ache. If they allowed you to simply point and click through the web interface I would have done it already.

Will also look at another investment at Foord in the near future as I have a baby on the way and would like a separate fund specifically to cash out in 10-20 years or so when school fees and things start adding up.


I should also mention that I obviously have a Google Doc with all my investments/expenses listed for every year. The difference however is that I'm still budgeting on my salary from 2011 and exclude anything like bonuses or overtime from that budget so that I have much more money to play with that is unaccounted for and that I don't bargain on having.

It means that I can live on an extremely tight budget by default but have plenty of money to spend without getting used to a rich lifestyle on paper.

*****

The old "Pay yourself first" rule always applies though. Meaning have all your investment preset and debited as if they are expenses.

Don't fall for the "I'll invest what's left at the end of the month" because it just doesn't work and very very few people have the self-discipline to pull that off.

Even if you just put R500 a mont away, that's better than nothing and some saving rather than no saving applies.

R500 p/m over 20 years is almost R400 000 if you never increase and manage to only get 10% interest. Seems like nothing every month but amount to a whole lot at the end of the day.
 
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SauRoNZA said:
I've got two managed investments one through Alexander Forbes which is basically my RA from previous company and then another through Old Mutual as well as a regular RA with them.

Then I also pay my home loan at 150% of the actual instalment rate which is another form of investment as I completely offset the interest I would have incurred by paying it off in less than 10 years.

Then I have some self managed ETF stuff through SATRIX and will probably add their new international Unit Trusts option in the near future if it wasn't such a paperwork ball ache. If they allowed you to simply point and click through the web interface I would have done it already.

Will also look at another investment at Foord in the near future as I have a baby on the way and would like a separate fund specifically to cash out in 10-20 years or so when school fees and things start adding up.


I should also mention that I obviously have a Google Doc with all my investments/expenses listed for every year. The difference however is that I'm still budgeting on my salary from 2011 and exclude anything like bonuses or overtime from that budget so that I have much more money to play with that is unaccounted for and that I don't bargain on having.

It means that I can live on an extremely tight budget by default but have plenty of money to spend without getting used to a rich lifestyle on paper.
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Awesome advice :)

Yeah I also don't take into account bonuses or overtime. Overtime isn't really a thing where I work, but bonuses have been pretty consistent.

I'm quite surprised that not many people (or none - my memory fails me) set specific amounts for things. I always thought that was the way to go.
 
akescpt said:
when I grow up I want to do this:love:
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It is nice, took us a while to get it setup though. Nothing special about it really, all it boils down to is to only live on the money which we already have i.e. the money we are using this year is what I made/earned in 2012/13. So what I am earning now will be used in 2015/2016.

Another thing that I have found is that I started spending less. With a monthly income its easy to buy something as you know you can balance it out over the next month or two. With your whole years income in your account you tend to be more conservative even though you have more money as you know, once that is done its done until end of the year. Cannot ask my wife for a loan as she charges to much interest :p
 
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mr_norris said:
I'm quite surprised that not many people (or none - my memory fails me) set specific amounts for things. I always thought that was the way to go.
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Define "things" and then maybe I can elaborate for you.

I break my budget up into static amounts (Medical Aid, Garden Service, RA's, Investments, Car Payments, House Payments, Bike Payments etc and then Dynamic amounts such as Groceries, Petrol etc which I over inflate on purpose.

Then I also have sub totals for total investments (anything generating money) and total expenses (pissing money away) and I try to keep those two as close to each other as I can year after year.

And then after all that I have a "spendable" amount at the bottom which allows for eating out etc. This excludes any money above and beyond my 2011 salary as well as overtime or bonuses.

*****

Maybe I should also add that I don't do any credit outside of Home Loan (which I manage as an investment) and vehicle finance (which is 15% of my 2011 Salary) .

My Credit Card is a money saving measure because it costs me nothing and generates some interest. It's not there as a means to incur debt it's merely a convenience/cost thing.

Everything else is cash.
 
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SauRoNZA said:
Define "things" and then maybe I can elaborate for you.
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I thought most people commenting here didn't set allowances for things like:

- Groceries
- Entertainment
- Petrol

But it seems that you do :)

Sounds like you have a beast of a budget plan going there!
 
mr_norris said:
I thought most people commenting here didn't set allowances for things like:

- Groceries
- Entertainment
- Petrol

But it seems that you do :)

Sounds like you have a beast of a budget plan going there!
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I set allowances for

Food
Car expenses inc petrol maintenance etc
General snacks eg lunch
Social. Inc eating out, bar
Personal. Inc projects, charity, presents for myself
House. All expenses relating to my house
Static expenses. cellphone, medical, RAs etc
Ad hoc expenses. This allowance is placed in a savings account and only used for unplanned expenses or single occurrence events eg Birthday presents

Allowances are calculated on previous year expenses with an inflation factor taken into account.

I also do spotchecks every 5 days by comparing my bank balances to my expense spreadsheet.

The trick is discipline.
 
I recently paid off and cancelled my overdraft and it felt good to get rid of that huge amount of debt. Now I am going to work on my credit card and pay off more than the minimum but the maximum that I can afford each month and then reduce it to zero balance each month until I have it paid off. Or at least reduce it to an amount that should be sufficient for "emergency use". Personally I think it's better to pay whatever you can afford and live off money you actually have rather than what your credit card says you have.
 
Xiphan said:
I recently paid off and cancelled my overdraft and it felt good to get rid of that huge amount of debt. Now I am going to work on my credit card and pay off more than the minimum but the maximum that I can afford each month and then reduce it to zero balance each month until I have it paid off. Or at least reduce it to an amount that should be sufficient for "emergency use". Personally I think it's better to pay whatever you can afford and live off money you actually have rather than what your credit card says you have.
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Amen to that, I'm also in the process of paying off my credit card.

It's absolutely tough when you get yourself into a position where you need to pay it off to have money :/
 
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