Starting this year, I got in the habit of looking at my bank account EVERY MORNING.
I have two different ways I have been tracking incoming and outgoing expenses.
The first is in Google Drive. It is a spreadsheet. Across the top I have all of my categories and how much I have budgeted for each of them and as I subtract transactions, it tells me how much is truly left in my bank account (Including ones that have not cleared yet).
The second is Every Dollar. This tells me how much I have left over for the month after the planned income and expenses. At the end of the month I will be taking the overage and putting half into savings to build my Baby Emergency Fund. And Half to getting us back ahead. I would like to be living off last month’s income on a regular basis but I don’t want to stop all contributions to the emergency fund. This strategy may not work, but until I try it I won’t know.
I also HATE the idea of using cash. I hate the idea of walking around with cash. Stuff happens, cash gets lost. I am also super crazy about my list making and meal planning. I never buy anything off the list. And I compare prices at different stores to make sure I am getting the best price. So I have a separate account with NO OVERDRAFT protection that is used for groceries and gas only. I track to make sure I am within my budget for these two categories. This is a new thing we started in January, this also may not work for us but it’s been going well so far.
I love the idea of getting out of debt. When I started with Every Dollar at the beginning of the month, I went through the last year and did essentially a budget for the last 12 months to see how mad we have been. Let me just say that it was not pretty. It was incredibly humbling to see what was happening. We have been back on track for the last 3 months but I now have the hubby on board. We opened the Etsy store which is mostly his stuff, and we are working on selling off our stuff.
Every little bit helps!
This month we have paid off $716.22 so far and that is just paying the minimums while trying to build our emergency fund.
