Keeping Budgets

[5ft Diva]

I have a budget that BS and I made in Excel that has worked very well for me up until this point. I have wanted to track our spending habits and patterns so it's been very detailed for about 2 years, but now it can be simplified because I have a good grasp on this. Does anyone use a particular program or have a template that they use that is simple that they absolutely love?

I find it interesting that I'm not the only person who's been ready to make changes/adjustments w/ my finances. I really appreciate Erudite and Dia for starting blogs and threads about this topic. It's given me the courage to ask some questions that I thought might be viewed as kind of dumb. I can see now that I'm just ready for the "next step" in working w/ finances. Oh, a never ending journey!

[Dia Minha]

It is interesting that you would bring up the fact of tracking for years and now being ready to take that information and use it. That is exactly how I have been feeling for a while and have just recently convinced DH that we need to do. The information we stock piled over the years really did help. We were able to see patterns in our spending and used that to come up with our new spending plan. Like I mentioned before, DH is still using Quicken to track. This is still important, because financial situations can change dramatically in a short period of time. If you continue to track where you money is going then you will be better able to handle any changes that come your way.

Dia

[5ft Diva]

I'm still using Quicken to keep track of money, especially since I use it to pay my bills. I just would like to know what budget people use that is pretty simple and even better if they have a format they use that is simple and what it is.

[Dia Minha]

Ok, maybe I'm not understanding your question. I'll post the link here for the article that we are using to form our budget and maybe that will better answer your question.

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

Diva, I know you usually don't have the time to read these links, but in this case I don't have a book for you, nor can I copy and paste this authors work (at least not legally, as far as I know). Just think of it has a very short self help book in article form that you can only read on the internet. hehehe It's not too long and it might clear up a lot of my recent jibberish. It does seem to have helped Erudite.

[5ft Diva]

Thanks, Dia.

[Erudite]

Yep! It has! I've emailed the article link on to my DH too. We have a "date" to discuss this stuff tomorrow night, and I'm hoping for some good changes in the way we do our spending/saving/budgeting/planning. This is incredibly timely info for me!!

I can see that I'll have to dig into the info we have and see what it says, although, it does seem like some of it would be not so useful just because the whole point of the changes needing to be made is that our financial situation has changed (and not recently either...I'm just barely coming to the fact that we need to adjust to those changes differently than we have) AND our children are growing up and thus growing more expensive so old information may not be as useful.

On a completely fun sidenote...my 4 year old offered not to grow up a few weeks ago. Isn't that nice of him?! LOL He loves his preschool so much that he doesn't want to change schools next year, so he said he didn't want to grow up. I told him that was fine with me, he could stay 4, but in kindergarten they have fun games, and songs and you get to learn to read. He wasn't impressed. So, I brought out the big guns...snacks! and a playground!!! He had to think it over, but finally agreed it would be ok to go to kindergarten next year. Whew!