Comments on: Simplify your money

By: Brittany

Brittany — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:38:51 +0000

I’d love to hear if anyone has suggestions of alternatives to Mint!

I love Mint and used to use it religiously to track my spending and set budgets by category, etc. But now, I can’t use it because it won’t accept my foreign bank account! So if anyone knows of alternatives — perhaps where you can enter everything by hand (even though that would probably be too time-consuming and I’d just give up)?

By: anne

anne — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:09:45 +0000

I have set up a separate checking account and labeled it my “credit card account”.
Each time I make a credit card purchase (for gas, groceries, medical, etc.)….I transfer that amount immediately to the credit card account, as if I were paying with a debit card.
That way, the amounts are immediately removed from my regular checking account (so I know it’s already “spent”), and I pay my credit card bill out of the credit card account.
This gives me the immediate accountability of a debit card, but the security and protection of a credit card. It works really well.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:25:21 +0000

Great tips, Karen. We’ve gone paperless with everything we can. On top of simplifying bill pay, it also cuts down on serious paper clutter. We use our bank’s online bill pay system for everything, too. I feel much more secure without having my account information floating around with every utility in town. I even pay my rent through our bank. It’s set up to automatically mail a check to our landlord to arrive on the first of the month. It’s nice because we don’t have to spend the time to drop off a check and it automatically debits the money from our account, so we don’t have to wait for it to be deposited to be reflected in our checking out. It helps us keep a better handle on our budget.

By: Linda

Linda — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:59:26 +0000

In reply to Linda.

I should add that after 2 months, I was able to pay the mortgage and every utilitiy bill on the day I received it….the credit card is the only one that I don’t pay right away…they don’t get their money until the day before it is due (which is what allows it to act as a float/cushion in my checking account). My credit card created a float for me, allows me to earn cash-back on everything, I never pay interest and it basically makes it so that my checkbook only sees 5 debits a month….Mortgage, Electric, Car Payment, Natural Gas & Credit Card (which basically consolidated all of my other expenses into a single payment every month). The trick to this is DISCIPLINE! You cannot overspend, or it will cost you interest if you can’t cover that CC payment!!!

By: Linda

Linda — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:50:17 +0000

This sounds complicated, but once you create it, it’s simple. First I created a budget based on a weekly basis. I took my main “living expenses” such as Mortgage, Electric, Gas, Water, Cable, Car Payment and Insurance and figured out how much each one cost for the entire year….then I divided that number by 52. I now know how much those things cost on a weekly basis, and then I figured out how much we need for Gas/Tolls/Oil – Food – Clothing/Gifts – Entertainment & Medical on a weekly basis. Since we get paid weekly, it is easy to subtract all of the weekly budget needs and the rest goes into savings and vacation funds (retirement fund comes out before we ever see it, so that’s already gone). Now, I use a credit card to pay my all of my non-living expenses (gas/tolls, food, clothing/gifts, entertainment & medical) so I keep a spreadsheet for each category and every morning (or late night) I sit down and subtract what I spent on each category’s balance and add it to the Credit Card Account Sheet’s balance….it’s actually just sitting in my checking account, but tracking it makes it so that I know what’s left, and that the money is virtually “set aside” so that I can pay the credit card off each month. Now, sometimes I might steal from gas or gifts to pay groceries & vice-versa – but I try to never break my budget in any category for the week. Since I only use one credit card (with a cash-back bonus), it gives me a one-month lead time to pay it off, thus the checking account is always flush with funds for bills that I pay as direct debit (like the mortgage). I never borrow from the Living Expense fund (mortgage, utilities, insurance, car payment) so that money is always available. After the first month, you’ll find your checkbook never feels “short.” I set the spreadsheet up so that each category has it’s own sheet, and the front page has each category listed that links to it’s current balance, so I always know how much I have left for each thing at a glance. It takes me about 10 minutes every morning, but I never run short – the credit card fund always serves as a cover, since it’s never due until the end of the following month…gas and groceries add up fast and act as a “float” in case one of our paychecks is delayed (neither of us have direct deposit available and Chicago winters sometimes make us too lazy to stop at the bank on the way home!! lol) I even started using the credit card to pay the utilities that don’t charge a fee to pay them online…I get the card’s cash back bonus, and basically an extra month before I have to debit those funds from my checking account to pay the credit card bill. After a few months I noticed that my checkbook never fell below $2,000, so I actually transferred most of that into savings in order to earn the interest…and I can transfer it back in a click if needed. Sorry it’s hard to explain clearly, but it does work and it’s actually WAY simpler than it sounds here!

By: Mary

Mary — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:49:12 +0000

Great tips! We have gone paperless for every bill that offers it. We’re left with just 2 paper bills (water/sewer & property taxes) and those annoy me, but there’s nothing I can do about that, I guess.

Our finances are pretty streamlined and work really well for us right now. The Hubby is paid weekly and I have organized a payment schedule (roughly based around due dates, but not exactly) so that each paycheck = the bills I have planned to pay + a budgeted amount of cash that is the same each week.

When he was paid twice a month, it drove me insane and I always worry that we will eventually get stuck with that again. If so, I think your plan like splitting paychecks or using a seperate mortgage account like Mrs. Money suggested will work.

Oh and like you suggested, I always pay the bills right on pay day. Every Friday morning is my set time to sit down and get it all done. It only takes a few minutes since I already have a plan with a designanted place for every dollar!

By: Kacie

Kacie — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:18:36 +0000

I’m glad you could make some sense out of my post. It sounds like a complicated concept but it makes sense in my brain!

We are still waiting for the direct deposit stuff to be changed by HR. I hope it won’t take long for this new system to be working.

But YES it’s all about symmetry for me.

I like Mrs Money’s simple solution too, of just putting half the mortgage payment into the account each time. That’s way less complicated. Wish I thought of that!

By: Mrs. Money

Mrs. Money — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:47:18 +0000

I have had a separate “mortgage account” for years that I put half our mortgage payment into each pay period. It works out very well!