Meal planning will play a key role in working with a grocery budget that is shrinking by 16% starting now. Gonna "make it work" on $1000/month, baby! The left column lists: breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and shopping list.
This is the year-at-a-glance money sheet. Kind of old school ledger style. There are 12 categories and they spread three sheets across (this is the first sheet.) These sheets will be used for "analysis" as my dad put it yesterday. To study the discrepencies between budgeted amounts and amounts actually spent.
This is what I'm calling the black/red sheet. This will show each month whether we came in below or above budget, overall. Also, it will show, if we came over budget, where the money to cover the overage came from. I may create another sheet that shows more detail in this info (ie. by category of spending rather than overall), if it will be useful.
I'm kind of proud of this one. This is the month-at-a-glance money sheet. I was able to contain all 12 categories (groceries, bills, health, auto, educational/cultural/recreational, professional, home, food - out, clothing, gifts. fun, donations, plus a space for income) on one sheet.
I included the monthly budgeted amount for each month at the head of each category's column. This way, every time an expense is plugged in, it will be subtracted from the amount currently available for that category, in that moment/in real time. This is reminiscent of the envelope method of keeping cash in envelopes...it provides one with the visual of a literally shrinking amount. (Interestingly, my dad didn't really get this. He felt like it was easier to add amounts spent as you go along. My mom, on the other hand, felt this method has "vibration"...what I think of as "resonance" :-)
In addition to using these sheets, I will be printing out my checking and savings account statements once a week. This way I will stay on top of how much is actually in the accounts to cross reference with how much of the budgeted amounts have been spent/are available.
I'm excited to overlay these methods onto real life over the next few months. I am nervous about paying out the self-employment tax on Cap's consulting income. I think it's going to be tight...
Love and peace, people, keep feeling it!
3 comments:
It looks as if you are on your way to making your budget work. I think the data sheets are great. I once tried the envelope method but it didn't last very long. I do use Quicken but only for balancing my check book/credit cards. I really should try to use the budget feature.
Have you ever thought of paying the self-employment taxes quarterly so it's not one big lump sum at the end of the year? When I was doing data entry at home I paid taxes quarterly. If I paid extra I ended up getting it back in my tax return.
Um, yeah, but I haven't gotten to the point of figuring out how to pay them quarterly. I am assuming there is a special form and address to send the form and check to, but haven't figured that out yet...
I keep thinking we're going to get fined for not paying quarterly, bc I'm pretty sure you're supposed to, but that hasn't happened yet either...
I pay my art sales taxes quarterly. It's not that difficult but it is a pain in the bottom. But I did just make my own little data sheet for our budget. I want to make sure we have a handle on things in 2010.
Post a Comment