What's your budgeting process like?

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HavocXphere

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Since realizing my own process is a mess I'm curious to hear how other people are doing this.

Do you use budgeting software? Apps? Excel?

Do you save a fixed amount or whatever is left?

How do you deal with big ticket items? Emergencies? Holidays?

Using credit cards or not?

etc
 
HavocXphere said:
Since realizing my own process is a mess I'm curious to hear how other people are doing this.

Do you use budgeting software? Apps? Excel? No

Do you save a fixed amount or whatever is left? - R20k plus

How do you deal with big ticket items? Emergencies? Holidays? cash only

Using credit cards or not? - debit card only

etc
Click to expand...

got rid of the credit card years ago and got myself out of debt - save as much as possible every month
 
So here goes.

My wife and I pay everything with our credit cards to max our ebucks. These are settled every month to 0. Every receipt of things we buy gets put into what we call a "receipt jar". My wife takes the receipts and pops them into excel under various headings salaries, groceries, entertainment etc so we can track our spend. All extra cash goes straight into bond.

I realize this may be a longer process but this works for us. The moment you understand where your money is going its easier to "control" it and not it you. I then pull money as I need from the bond. As its a flexi bond I have access to the case immediately. I have about 5/6 months salary in there at the moment.

I do not buy anything on actual credit if I cant I afford it, then I save a few months or don't buy it at all.
 
I usually just pay bills at the end of the month and then buy whatever I want. Whatever is left over at the end of the month goes into Satrix.
 
I have a somewhat odd way of going about it.

20% of my salary goes into savings. I then settle all accounts. What is left gets divided into 4 "portions" I then pay myself each week one of those portions. This money is purely "fun" cash.

I will use my credit card once a month purely for some form of credit rating but settle immediately.

Oh yes, Excel spreadsheet for sure.
 
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No specific budget since, being self-employed, my monthly net earnings varied a lot. I determined many years ago that when my investment return exceeded my earned income, I would sell the business

That occurred when I was 63

A fly in the ointment is SARS. Since 2012, there is an exemption of R34k on interest earned income. They dispute this and every year help themselves to my bank account. It takes 10 to 12 months to get a reply and all I am told is to visit their office. You then speak to an aggressive person who seems unaware of the tax code. I suggested to them that they were dishonest and was told that if I speak like that, I will be escorted out the building
 
I've been using Excel to budget for the monthly fixed expenses like bond, insurance, med aid etc.

What's left of that is usually discretionary eg. takeouts, entertainment etc.

What makes this exercise somewhat futile is when you add 3 school going kids into the mix.

Then you have to unknown things like fundraisers, excursions, emergencies I could go on forever.

I suggest you maybe allocate % portion to some broad categories and then filter from there
 
My process goes as follows

/sees money in account, thinks of budget
/proceeds to by large amounts of drugs and alcohol
/20 days later: why tf do I not have any money
/thinks about budgeting next month...

/repeats
 
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Life pretty good so I don't budget enough but it used to be just on paper add all income minus all fixed expenses and just estimate other expenses to see that things will sortoff work out. Then when I don't know were the money went I'll try and track all expenses better (keep slips and add it up)
 
Step 1 - How much money do I have.
Step 2 - Woohoo what can I buy.
Step 3 - I have no money.

Even as an adult I fail the marshmallow test.
 
Do you use budgeting software? Apps? Excel?
- No, but from my saving thread it seems that Excel is a good place to start and I have started tracking my spending via Excel this month.

Do you save a fixed amount or whatever is left?
- I save whatever is left after I have zeroed my credit card and all debits have gone off.

How do you deal with big ticket items? Emergencies? Holidays?
- I have a liquid interesting-bearing savings account for this purpose.

Using credit cards or not?
- I use my credit card for everything I possibly can. While I haven't budgeted my spending, I set myself a limit I will not cross when it comes to swiping my credit card, this way I can zero it every month. Problem is though, that limit has been rising too frequently for me and my savings are shrinking, hence I need to make use of Excel and find the leak.
 
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I still use Microsoft Money :D Data going back to 2001 :P Monthly salary is more than my yearly then :( Using an app is usefull, I know how much I should have next month this time.


Saving - fixed retirement savings. Put money in the safe each month, then random transfers, e.g I like keeping my bond to a rounded number, so what ever the interest is I round to the nearest thousand.

Big ticket items I just deal with at the time, either from savings, or somewhere else.

I only have a credit card , vehicle loans, and bond - no other accounts (credit card settled in full, but still attracts interest (Investec, the interest is low)
 
Do you use budgeting software? Apps? Excel?
No

Do you save a fixed amount or whatever is left?
I don't spend frivolously, so my necessities are paid for each month and the rest just sits untouched and some part of that then goes into whatever investments.
I realise this gets much trickier with a family and kids and stuff.

How do you deal with big ticket items? Emergencies? Holidays?
Paid for from savings.

Using credit cards or not?
For convenience and travelling.
Never actually go into credit (settle the balance before month-end).

Curious why you think you need to budget more rigidly? Do you spend a lot of money each month on things you don't actually need, eat out a lot etc? Not saving as much as you'd like to?
 
Do you use budgeting software? Apps? Excel?
Budget is a loose term, it's more of an expectation for each month on costs. I track my expenses and then interrogate line items as to whether I could be more efficient. Done in a combo of 22/7 app and then saved in my own excel.

Do you save a fixed amount or whatever is left?
Fixed on the automatic annuity deduction, then everything else after expenses, but the expenses are comprised of the same monthly ones and then discretionary so the overall savings amount is pretty fixed each month.

How do you deal with big ticket items? Emergencies? Holidays?
Emergencies - funded out of cash or access bond. Holidays - annual expectation on costs, then effectively divided by 12. So based on how many months have passed in the year, will always be grossly over or under that amount based on whether taken in the beginning middle or end of the year. Some years goes over the full year allocation, then just reshuffle to see if we can still achieve our overall target by moving it from other line items. Sometimes the year is going really well and so we're still at a very high savings rate will just have an ad hoc spend and not sweat the small stuff.

Using credit cards or not?
Yes but settled in full each month, so effectively used as a debit card but earns points at the same time. Funnel everything I can through it.

As a goal I like to try keep my overall inflation below CPI per year - have managed that so far for the past 4 years, but of course I did settle my Bond so it isn't a true reflection :)
 
HavocXphere said:
Since realizing my own process is a mess I'm curious to hear how other people are doing this.

Do you use budgeting software? Apps? Excel?

Do you save a fixed amount or whatever is left?

How do you deal with big ticket items? Emergencies? Holidays?

Using credit cards or not?

etc
Click to expand...


At the start of the month, I take fixed amounts for the annual stuff and save that - for example, car licence renewal, TV licence, car service, etc. So, basically, when the salary comes in, I pay the bills, move the savings items to a savings account, and the rest is the living expenses for the month.

When it's time to pay annual stuff, I take the money from the savings account to pay it.

I use a Google sheet - a new one each month - which makes it easy to update records on the go.

I have a set budget for each item / category (e.g. groceries; house maintenance; petrol). The sheet is set up so that at any point, I can see what's left for the month.

It's probably a complex system for some, but it works well for me.

The challenge lies in controlling spending to keep within budget. Most of the time, when an unplanned thing comes up, the extra costs can be absorbed by savings in other areas - as long as it's not major. Worst case, I'd have to dip into savings. But I try to avoid that.

If you have the room to set a percentage aside for savings, definitely do that. (By savings, I mean not savings for later expenses...I mean proper long-term savings)
 
For record keeping I use Excel. Go onto my transaction history for the month/month to date I want to track. Copy and paste in Excel. I had to put in some separation formulas to have the place spent, date, and amount in different columns otherwise in one column underneath each other is useless.

Draw pivot table from the organized data and little bit of manual sorting into whatever categories and add some graphs just because
 
Put 7k to 8k away per month then survive off the rest.
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