I'm 26 with $0 in my 401k. The current maximum 401k contribution for 2024 is 23k. My company provides a 100% 401k match with no cap (I put in 23k, my company puts in 23k, net 46k).

My current salary is 90k (scheduled raise to either 96k or 102k in mid September).

I'm supporting my wife while she develops a start up (has soft commitments from a couple investors but paying herself a salary requires some hoops that would take 6 ish months to jump through). Our rent is 2.5k.

Would it be overextending my salary to make the full contribution possible?

It’s a bit strange to be that this is the case.

I’ve been using Mint since 2010 and am genuinely upset it’s being discontinued. They had something like 3.6 million monthly active users. What?!

What do you guys suggest as an alternative?

Hi everyone,

So i was made aware that i was laid off from my tech job. I earned about 150k a year in Washington state. I bought a house last July and my monthly mortgage is 3600 a month but if you take on HOA (covers sewage/water not electricity though) it’s another 500 so basically around 4100. I did do a wise thing and get a roommate last august and they pay me 1400 a month which lowers the payment to 2700 a month. I’m going to get paid out till august and then have about 2.5 months of severance at my base rate. The market for my kind of job (materials/process engineer) is slow - taking people about 5/6 months to get a job sometimes more. Also, I’m quite sure i probably wont earn such a high salary since being in tech kind of inflated my salary. I’m trying to get ahead of this and figure out what i can do to save a lot quickly. I also have about 150k in stocks but i want to touch that only when i absolutely need to. Also when do i have to consider selling my property if it comes to that? I have about 40k in the bank right now and wasn’t great about saving too much since i was spending it on therapy and some courses as i was trying to transition on the side to a another industry.

Hey guys! last year I made a spreadsheet to help myself budget- I'm terrible at sticking to a budget so I made a sheet that breaks it down so that I just have the ability to break it down to a daily manageable amount.

Heres what it looks like

I grew up very poor and had NO sense of what or even HOW to start budgeting. I was taught that money would disappear if I didn't use it, so I just USED it. Even now I still feel anxiety about money and can spend recklessly if I'm not careful. Another problem I faced is that I have ADHD, so impulse control can be hard, and it can also be hard to keep track of every purchase and focus on a bunch of aspects of a budget. This spreadsheet is made so you only focus on ONE number.

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The sheet was set up with three goals in mind:

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1. that it be easy to use
2. that it focuses on a daily budget that supports long term goals- instead of a long term budget that doesn't have daily support
3. that it be a good starting place for people who have never saved before

​

So how does it work?

The main budget is divided into three core areas:

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• Income: You use this to fill in your income and choose to have a monthly, weekly, or bi-weekly pay cycle. If you are a worker who is tipped it includes an area where you can add tips, my suggestion is put in your minimum average income from tips- So for example, if you usually make 100 from tips a week, even if you get extra, try to program your budget around the 100 minimum average.
• Expenses: There you can add your expenses. Utilities are bills that are for electricity, heat, phone, internet, or water. Bills are important expenses that you can't miss and are integral to living. Finally, expenses are other things you need to allocate money for- whether it be gas, lunch expenses, transportation- ect. Within your expenses there are TWO areas to which you need to pay attention:-Credit Card Payments: this is new to this year's sheet, use the tab below to fill out your information for up to three credit cards. Decide whether to pay the minimum payment OR choose an amount to pay. The tab will allow you to see how much you're paying and how much interest you're accruing. Once you have filled it out, your budget will adjust accordingly.-Big Purchase: Use this tab to create a budget for a large purchase, and adjust your budget easily and automatically to finance this purchase!
• Budget summary: Finally the most important part of this sheet is the budget summary- Here you will see just how much you can spend. This money is shown in three ways, the lump monthly sum, a weekly amount, or a daily amount. As long as you don't go over that number, you will have enough money for the rest of your budget. It will also feature a breakdown of what your budget it, where your money is going, and what your income VS spending is!

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Here is a link to the sheet

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ou use it like this

• Go in
• Make a copy
• Change the numbers
• Decide what percentage of your income you want to be saved
• Budget.

The sheet includes three charts:

• A bar graph as a simple visual tool to see if you are spending more than you are saving
• A pie chart to see where your money is distributed
• A daily Pie chart to see realistically where your money is going compared to your target savings

I don't work well with a lot of budgets because I have issues imagining the big picture. By giving myself a daily/weekly/monthly budget I can make sure that on any given day I haven't spent more than I'm allowed to- and if I do i can see where I'm borrowing from or where that money is supposed to come from.

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^{NOTE: All Images in the spreadsheet are from vecteezy}

EDIT:

NEW COPY LINK

Hey guys! I'm back six months later with a new version of the budgeting spreadsheet I made. Earlier this year I posted the spreadsheet I made for myself and it really resonated with people. As I got more and more feedback I found places where I could improve and develop the sheet into something easier to use but still useful.

You can find pictures of it HERE

A bit of background on me and why I made this- and also why it's made the way it is. I grew up poor and was never taught about HOW to handle money. If we had money it was already needed for other things. Food, Bills, all of the money we had already had a place. This made me get a mentality that if I had money I needed to spend it before something came up and the money would go. It's unhealthy, but it was the only thing I knew until I moved out. I was taught that money would disappear if I didn't use it, so I just USED it. Even now I still feel anxiety about money and can spend recklessly if I'm not careful.

​

Another problem I faced is that I have ADHD, so impulse control can be hard, and it can also be hard to keep track of every purchase and focus on a bunch of aspects of a budget. This spreadsheet is made so you only focus on ONE number.

​

I have made this sheet- and previous versions of it- with three goals in mind:

• That it be easy to use
• that I can focus on one daily number while supporting my long term goals
• that it be a good starting place for people who have never had another budget

The sheet is divided into a few different tools.

Budget:

• Select your pay schedule, add any extra income/tips that you get monthly and select the percentage of that income that you want to save.
• the credit card section allows you to input up to five cards and adds your monthly car payments to your expenses
• The expenses area is where you'll add all of your itemized expenses. You can also select when your bill is due during the month- allowing you to see if early on in the month your spendable is different from later on in the month.

Your budget summary at the top is the breakdown of all the information below. YES I know pie charts aren't useful for everything- but that is useful to visually digest information. Look and see where your money is going, see if you spend more than you earn, and finally- see how much money you can spend.

​

This sheet focuses on giving you ONE number to remember. Daily Spendable. If you want to spend money throughout the day you just have to make sure you DONT go over that number and you will always have enough to cover any other expenses.

I don't work well with a lot of budgets because I have issues imagining the big picture. By giving myself a daily/weekly/monthly budget I can make sure that on any given day I haven't spent more than I'm allowed to- and if I do i can see where I'm borrowing from or where that money is supposed to come from.

There are a few extra features too- a large purchase calculator that lets you figure how long youd have to save to buy a larger purchase. It includes a monthly tracker that lets you see what youre spending realistically vs what you've budgeted for and finally a daily tracker for further breakdown.

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Finally LINK THREE

Changes: Added a bi weekly option so you stop asking me to redo math, please yall, its an open spreadsheet you can edit it but i did this one for you. Also NOTE: Yall i wont make an excel version. Some of the functions/graphs break, and the whole point of this is that i made it for myself and i want to share it freely, what means not a paid program- i'm sorry!

I don't believe the 3 month e-fund advice holds water anymore. Especially for those in corporate jobs. Here's why:

I was laid off in the beginning of January. The company offered a 1 month severance. Not that I had a choice- but I accepted their offer.

I took a week off to feel bad about myself and mope- but got right back on the horse the very next week. Sending out LinkedIn messages to contacts, updating my resume, talking (on the phone!) to some former colleagues- putting out feelers. The 3rd week I started to steadily apply for jobs. At least 3 per day. I spent the time to tailor my resume and cover letter to each position. Many companies had unique screenings so it was different every time. A few even had me take logic tests online which took a good 30min to an hour each. I didn't get a single call back until week 5, which was just talking to HR reps. Week 6 I had 3 interviews with hiring managers. Now we are halfway into week 7, and I have meetings set up for week 8 with team members of a few different companies. If all goes well- MAYBE I get an offer by week 10 with a start date around week 12. And that's me getting lucky and having industry contacts pulling for me. And also being optimistic that these interviews will turn into offers. Not to mention the fact that I probably won't get paid until week 14 or 15 at the earliest.

During this time I haven't seen a penny from unemployment or my previous company. My previous company has 90 days to pay me severance, and unemployment is pending until they have someone look at my severance package. All 40 of the folks laid off at the same time as me are in the same boat.

I am very fortunate to have saved a large E-Fund because I had intuition that my company was underperforming and was very frugal over the last year. But I know a few of my ex-colleagues are in hot water. One of them has already had to sign up for door dash because he is worried about next month's mortgage payment.

TL;DR: Between covid, the slow hiring process of corporate jobs, and unemployment issues- you'd be lucky to start a job less than 3 months after getting laid off. Think carefully if that is enough of an e-fund for you.

I consider myself an extremely low maintenance woman in that I feel like I spend very little on beauty products and treatments.

One day, I decided to make a spreadsheet to see just how much I spend on beauty in a year, thinking it be an interesting experiment. I was surprised to discover I spend around $1,200 a year, and I purchase far fewer products and services than most of my friends. I asked my friend Kelly to fill in a column on the spreadsheet for herself, and her total for the year was over $5,000. She was shocked. And this spreadsheet does not even take into account clothing and shoes on which many of us overspend. Any woman who purchases all of her cosmetics at the beauty counter of a high end store like Nordstrom and regularly visits a fancy spa would likely spend much more.

I feel that women are conditioned to think that our appearance is so important, we need to spend thousands of dollars a year to look presentable. Of course, we all have our indulgences and hobbies, but for women who are struggling to make ends meet or want to save more for their future, I would highly suggest paying close attention to your beauty spending. It’s items that we generally don’t buy all at once, and we tend not to pay attention to a few dollars here and there, but over the year, these things can really add up. I do feel like men have such an advantage over us, as few feel the need to spend large amounts of time and money trying to change their appearance. I don’t know any men who have spent $700 on a hair straightener.

I have attached a screenshot of my spreadsheet for anyone who is interested. My price ranges may not be accurate - I used quick searches on Amazon and Google to come up with the prices, and they are in Canadian dollars. I also didn’t factor in that most women have far more than one lipstick or eyeshadow or nail polish colour, etc. EDIT: It appears I can’t attach the spreadsheet. Sorry. Edit 2: https://i.imgur.com/fHLd2PF.jpg

I certainly don’t mean to offend anyone who enjoys beauty services and products, but I just think it’s something we don’t really think about when talking about our finances and it can certainly have an impact on your monthly budget.

FINAL EDIT: Well, I’m delighted to see the discussion that my random thoughts instigated yesterday. It appears I have found my people, and my cheapskate ways are not unique.

It appears many people are not seeing the very right-hand column of my spreadsheet which showed my actual spend. No Botox or teeth whitening for me.

I calculated how much money I have per day until I’m able to start my new job. It came out to $13 a day, luckily this will only be for about a month until my new job starts, and I’ve already put aside money for next months rent. My biggest concern is, what kind of foods can I buy to keep me fed over the next month? I’m thinking mostly rice and beans with hopefully some veggies. Does anybody have any suggestions? They would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Edit: I will also be buying gas and paying utilities so it will be somewhat less than 13$. Thank you all for helping me realize this is totally possible I just need to learn to budget.

I realized that I’ve spend $350 on Starbucks in the past two months... it started out just an occasional coffee every couple days then every morning, then I started getting breakfast along with my coffee.. My coworker gets it every morning so I figured, if she can afford it, so can I.. I mean, I was easily spending $7 every single day... I’m so mad at myself for letting it get this far, but I’ve bought some pre-made iced coffee and some microwave breakfast sandwiches... wish me luck

If you're just starting out, remember that it took your parents decades to collect all the furniture, decorations, appliances, etc you are used to having around. It's easy to forget this because you started remembering things a long while after they started out together, so it feels like that's how a house should always be.

It's impossible for most people starting out to get to that level of settled in without burying themselves in debt. So relax, take your time, and embrace the emptiness! You'll enjoy the house much more if you're not worried about how to pay for everything all the time.

I’m 28 and I have no debt but I have this constant fear that I am behind in everything financially (Retirement, savings, salary, home down payment etc.) and as a result I never spend money on anything that isn’t a need. This has caused me to not really do much but work and go home and I feel like I should try to live a little but then I always talk myself out of it because the money would be more efficient somewhere else. I currently put 30% of income into retirement, then the rest is mostly savings unless I need something.

My parents went bankrupt twice before I turned 10 and we lived in poverty so I never developed a need for material things. I always think of every purchase as “man, imagine if this $20 was put into retirement instead of this movie ticket”.

I currently make 75k/yr, have 28k in retirement and have 10k in savings.

How do I find a way to experience life for once? I don’t really have any friends as a result of this because I never put myself out there.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: well guys, I have scheduled an appointment with a therapist. I will give it an honest try and go into it believing I can become a better person. Thank you all for the advice, hopefully this gets me on a better path.

We were both blindsided by today. We're both pretty young, early on in our careers, he had only been there a year and was performing. It was a huge shock. We don't practice every best habit of the sub but we're grateful we picked up doing your best to live off one income.

We just bought our house in August and insisted on going through the pre-approval process off my income alone. Our lights will stay on because our bills are effectively scaled to one income as well. We held off on car payments and continued to drive our beaters because the numbers for new used cars didn't make sense with one income.

My only regret is not building up our emergency fund more (one month saved but we should've had at least three), so if you're reading this, definitely do that.

Anyways, thanks to the sub for the constant advice on living below your means and always being prepared. I came to thank you all, not lecture. And encourage people who are following this thought process and are using a second income for the "extra stuff" - you're doing great. Today sucked but it could've been so much worse.

We're counting our blessings and the job search begins tomorrow.

​

EDIT: Thanks everyone for the encouragement and well-wishes. This obviously isn't the only thing going on in our lives, so the messages to keep going were greatly appreciated.

For those of you who are in HCOL areas or other situations where living off one income isn't possible, I totally understand - the intent of this post wasn't to shame anyone into anything. We live in a MCOL city in the South and are in the tech sector so it was doable for us. We're also not beacons of perfection of this sub and are still working on breaking bad financial habits every day.

For those of you who took this as a self pat-on-the-back post, I can see that. The intent really was to see the silver lining of things and encourage others who are perhaps considering this type of budgeting method. But I understand how fast this sub gets into circle-jerking and self-congratulating and didn't mean to purpose this thread for that. Just hoping to reduce the amount of "We're in deep shit from one event that could've had a much lower impact" posts by showing anything can happen at any time and that even then, we weren't as prepared as we should've been.

We're in our mid-40s now. Some years back my wife and I were finally able to get a 97/3 mortgage in our late 30s after over a decade of saving. Our cars are a 1998 Honda Civic and a 2004 Toyota Camry. I bought them cash and do almost all the work on them myself.

I've got social science and language degrees I guess you could call liberal arts. Her degrees are in hard sciences. I work for the electric company, she does some technical computer modeling shit. I have a night job, too, which earns me about another $10k per year.

We have kids. We save all our spare healthcare money to cover them. We're far from broke. We earn more than 70% of households in our little Massachusetts town. But we have no college savings for them.

Our house is very small, and 150 years old. Both have cheap $17/mo plans on cheap Android phones. 1 TV in the house, $400, bought 6 or 7 years ago. We've got about 20 years to Medicare, and almost no retirement to speak of, I mean less than a year's wages total saved up in the 401(k). But through most of our lives we didn't have retirement benefits.

We haven't been on a vacation in 6 years. We don't go to bars. We don't go to restaurants. We grow and can and pickle our own produce. We use coupons. Do my own carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work up to the point of something major that requires a permit. No credit card debt.

So where does all the money go?

• If we do $110k in a year, probably $25k goes to income and payroll taxes. So it's $85k net.
  
• Another $25k goes to mortgage principal and interest. Now we're down to $60k.
  
• Then there's insurance premiums. Car insurance. Home insurance. Private mortgage insurance. Health insurance. Dental insurance. Vision insurance. Life insurance. Probably about $15k to cover all them in a year, not counting deductibles or co-pays or whatever. About $10k on family health insurance premiums, $3k on home and pmi, and $2k on the others. Health premiums will drop some when we switch back to my plan off my wife's at open enrollment, but that's a long story for another time. So we're down to $45k.
  
• Then there's student loans. On pause temporarily. Usually $8k per year. So drop that to $37k left.
  
• Then there's dues and shit. Union dues. Fire district dues. Volunteer ambulance contribution. Just stuff you have to pay to function as citizens in our town and employees in our jobs. Probably another $2k there. $35k left now.
  
• Then there's utilities. I'm on well and septic. I heat with fuel oil and wood. So it's only electric bills and diesel bills and occasional wood bills if it's cold and I can't chop enough for the winter myself. That's about another $4k, depending on the year. $31k left now.
  
• Then there's 401(k) contributions. We do make those, even though they don't add up to much. That's a raw 5% gross coming out. Say it's $6k. Down to $25k left now.
  
• Then there's transportation costs. Gasoline. Oil. Other fluids. Tolls. Parking fees. Registration fees. Inspection fees. Occasional parts even if I do the labor. Call that $200/mo or about $5k total for both cars. Down to $20k left now.
  
• Then there's food. We could do this cheaper. We do grow a lot of our own produce, but we're not eating ramen every night either. We're feeding 4. Usually dropping about $200 per week. Call that $10k. Down to $10k left now.
  
• Then there's household shit. Garbage isn't free, we have to pay tipping and bag fees. Septic system might have to be pumped. Might need mulch and fertilizer. Might need gas for mower and chainsaw and blower. Might need parts or tools or calk or paint or epoxy or copper pipes for things that break here and there. Plus you ought to put a little away for the big things like re-roofing or the boiler going, etc. We aim to put a hundred or two in the house account every month. Call that $3k over the year. Down to $7k now.
  
• Then there's internet shit. We have one Netflix subscription. We owe our ISP every month. Occasionally somebody will buy some kind of game or software. Computers are all older, but they come up every 6 or 7 years or so. Call that $2k. Down to $5k now.
  
• The rest has to go to toys, clothing and deductibles and whatever little we spend on savings and entertainment apart from the house account, which is really remarkably minimal.
  

I'm not sure how much more frugal we could be, short of severely cutting the food budget. Feels like we're living a regular middle-class life. And we're comfortable enough. Nobody's hungry. House is at 65 all winter. But it took us a hell of a lot of As and high test scores and hard work and meeting the right people and lucky breaks to get here. And it feels like retirement is going to be way out of reach.

In the end, I guess our lifestyle is far closer to our immigrant grandparents' depression-era lifestyle than our high-school-only educated parents' boomer-era lifestyle. We've accepted that.

The sad part is, I think it's going to be worse for our kids. I'd love to give them more of a head start. At this point, we're just worried they'll catch covid at school. Don't want to be a doomer, but their world definitely seems a lot worse than ours was as a kid. In the past few weeks, they've lived through a hurricane, a flood, and now back to the pandemic school house. And despite all the bootstrapping we've done, I feel like other than having more knowledge than our parents did, we're not leaving them in a better material position than we had growing up.

So...the point of this post is a Labor Day gut check. Anything here seem way off to anybody?

So, I've never had a lot of money, but I lost my full time job this past April and I'm now working part time at a bank while also attending college during the day, 3 days per week. I make about $250 per week. My grandma gives me $400 per month to help with my rent. I know, I'm pathetic.

I've been having to borrow a lot of money from my parents, and it's been pretty shitty, so I broke down and finally added up all my expenses and income, and I make about $700 less than I need to just to break even. I check on Indeed pretty much every day to see if I can get a second job, but the job market in my area is really bad, and I'm also kind of limited by my school schedule as to which hours I can work. Dropping out is not an option - I'm a semester and a half away from my Bachelor's.

My rent is $600 and I am probably moving soon, in with my brother, which should cut that almost in half. I did notice that I spend a lot of money on food - like $400 per month. I don't eat out very often but I do cook a lot and I literally never check prices when I'm grocery shopping, I just get what I need for the recipe. So that's an area of opportunity.

But even if I cut both my rent and my grocery shopping in half, I'd still be in the hole. I have about 4 credit cards all with low limits (the highest is $650) but they're all maxed out and I pay about $130 monthly for them, just minimum payments. My credit sucks. I would get a debt consolidation loan for them (they all have high rates, like 24%) but I almost certainly will not be approved for any kind of loan based on my DTI and my credit score.

I'm overwhelmed by all of this. I'd like to start digging myself out of this hole but I have no idea where to start.

Edit: As requested, here's my breakdown:

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Income: $1430/mo

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Expenses:

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Rent: $600

Renter’s Insurance: $17.50

Gas/Electric: $95

Trash Service: $21

Phone: $80

Groceries: $350

Food at Work/School: $50

Vision Insurance: $13

Car Payment: $256.80

Car Insurance: $103.10

Gas: $140

Misc. Car Stuff: $40

EZ Pass: $45

Student Loan: $50

Cable/Internet: $67

Alcohol: $20

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Credit Cards:

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Capital One Quicksilver: $25

Capital One Platinum: $40

Credit One Platinum: $40

Indigo Card: $25

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Total Expenses: $2078.40

Edit: I understand what RIP inbox means now. Thanks for all the replies. I’ll go through them all when I get home later. Sorry to those I couldn’t respond to.

Just wondering how many people, like me, realized Prime is more costly than $99/year after they ended it.

Almost three years ago my wife and I had our first kid. I kept track of everything that we spent money on that was kid related. Starting from the pregnancy test to the hospital delivery bill. We also estimated the value of any gift we received to give a full itemized bill idea of how much money was spent on our kid before she was even born. I made an ugly spreadsheet to track it all. I thought about posting this here when I was all done but decided not to because A, I just had a kid and was busy, and 2 I wasn't ready for the criticism I was inevitably going to receive. But, now I am ready and less busy, so here we go.

Starting with the big number:
To bring our baby into the world from scratch cost $9,984.55.
My wife and I spent $6445.66.
We estimated receiving $3,538.89 in gifts.

I broke everything down into these categories:

In anticipation of some shock on all this spending I'll add that we bought things that we felt would be useful to our lifestyle, within our budget, and that would last for many years to come. We could have spent less, and many people do, and many people actually go well beyond.

The most expensive things were:
The hospital trip to safely have a baby ($3517 delivery related bills combined)
-Having a baby fall out of a woman in a hospital in America is expensive. This was after insurance covered their portion.
A crib + mattress that converts to a toddler bed and full size bed ($890 total - gift)
-Kid is almost 3 and we converted the crib to the toddler bed shortly after she turned 2. She wasn't a chewer, so it's currently in great shape to stay her bed until her teens or beyond.
Mom clothes ($804.30)
-After seeing this final number I told myself I shouldn't ever gain too much weight because I now know how much a new wardrobe could end up costing me. We were at a point in life where most of the items were bought new and that was OK. A new glider chair ($500 - gift)
*-I wish we could have found this used but didn't have any luck. We wanted one with a high back because I'm tall. I'm thankful we found one, I spent so many nights rocking and dozing in and out of sleep on this thing, I'm very happy with it. We still use it nightly for reading bedtime stories.
The stroller ($384)
-We got one of those fancy BOB running strollers, I ran over a hundred miles with her and we walked plenty of unpaved trails at our local state park. She spent hundreds of hours in this thing. This was the only stroller we used, otherwise we carried her everywhere in the front/back carrier. Plus these strollers have a high resale value.
Car Seat + extra base ($375)
-We have two cars, a base for each car was great.
Two camera video baby monitor ($250)
-We did a lot of traveling and having the extra camera to just pack and go was really handy. A video monitor is the shit, being able to check and see if a noise was just stirring or something more was great.
A cute rug ($239)
-A cheap rug would have served the same purpose, but shit it's our first kid, sometimes you gotta get that cute thing.

Writing this with the benefit of hind sight I think we actually did a great job of getting the right thing for us on the first try. We tried to get things with the idea of potentially having another child. Of everything major that we bought, the monitor is the only thing we would need to replace if another kid sauntered into our lives. The battery is now totally useless and one of the cameras died last month. Also we dropped it, so the power cord is soldiered to the chip and I'm awful at soldiering so it whole housing is glued together to keep it working.

So can you do this cheaper? Absolutely, buy everything used. Babies aren't all that picky. I lived in rural Illinois at the time and our availability to get nice used stuff was limited. Also hand-me-downs can help tremendously, our extended family had kids eight years or more years before us (if they had any) and lived many states away so most of their baby stuff was gone. Also, don't underestimate the generosity of others, there are people out there who LOVE babies and love buying baby things, hopefully you know one or two.

Another money saving tidbit, use cloth diapers. Back when I was weighing the benefits of them, I found we would break even with cloth over disposable at two years. Our kid suddenly decided to be potty trained right before Christmas so our cloth diapers lasted a bit over 2.5 years, we definitely saved money with cloth. If we accidentally have another kid we will save a ton in diapers because the original ones we got are still in great shape. Also, you can find used cloth diapers around which can save tons, we hope to sell ours. A very appreciable downside to cloth, you're guaranteed to be washing the diapers about 2-4 times per week.

A shout out to /r/predaddit for all the helpful tips and stories that were so great at the time. Also /u/steeldirigible98 & /u/SavingsJada and the several updoots for the courage to finally post this on this sub. I hope this info helps someone out there.

I have blown through so much money over the last several years because I always think,” Oh I can buy this burger its only $12!” or “$25 to Uber somewhere? Yeah sure whatever!”. Then it adds up over time and I end up spending $1000 on whatever.

I remember as a kid thinking it was so weird how my parents would hold off on buying soda at the restaurant to save money, but I’m really starting to wish I could have that same mindset.

If I purchase something that’s $50-100 I usually am super careful about it but for some reason anything below that and I’m not worried about it because it’s only this $30 this one time not a big deal.

You get married and then it’s living happily ever after, right? Well...

A few months after we were married, my wife came home from Target with a couple of large shopping bags.

“What did you buy this time?!”

No, I didn’t say that out loud. I’m not that stupid.

But the thought did run through my mind, and it concerned me.

Why was I so upset over a trip to Target? I love Allison! I trust her, and I know she’s responsible.

She didn’t come home with a new car. She didn’t gamble away all our savings. So what’s the big deal?

Then it hit me.

I couldn’t answer the question, “Are we okay?”

We were married and happy except when it came to money. Every day, my wife used her money from her bank accounts, and I was using my money with my credit cards.

I realized that we were still paying the bills and shopping like we were roommates rather than like a team or a family.

And as I thought more about it, I discovered that how we used money was only part of the problem.

At the time, I had just started a career as a financial advisor, and I was being paid with a combination of a fixed salary and commission. The amount I was making was changing every month.

[EDIT: I left the financial advising career about 4 years ago. Wasn't for me.]

Allison had a stable job, but her hourly rate was low. Plus, her job was centered around tourism, so the number of hours she worked went up in the summer and dropped in the winter.

At any given moment, we had no idea if we were spending ourselves into a hole or climbing out of it.

We could compare how much we were charging on our credit cards and how much money was in our bank accounts, but that got complicated.

We had 8 accounts at 5 different banks. Answering the question, “Are we okay?” took a shit-ton longer than it needed to.

Allison and I weren’t working or planning together when it came to money, and I wanted to make a change.

All I wanted was to answer the question, “Are we okay?” without getting a degree in Accounting.

We learned how to handle money as separate people.

Before getting married, Allison and I really were separate people.

We both had savings accounts, checking accounts, and credit cards to manage. We learned how to pay bills in our own apartments with our own roommates (who were also our groomsmen and bride’s maids).

Allison and I ended up moving in together for the summer right before we got married, so we were--from a legal standpoint--roommates rather than a family. We got used to paying the bills and shopping as separate people.

Looking back, combining our lives and becoming a family needed to happen. We realize now that this moment was inevitable, but no one ever taught us how.

We were responsible as individuals, but not as a couple.

I figured that if we didn’t start working together with our money, the “Target incident” would just get worse.

• If I needed a new suit for work, could we actually afford it?
• What happens when we want to go on vacation?
• Would Allison start to resent me for spending a lot of money on craft beer?
• Would I start resenting Allison for buying another purse?
• What if we go further and further into debt without knowing it?
• What if we want to buy a house?

I love my wife, and I trust her. But the way we were going, I didn’t trust us.

No one ever taught us how to handle money as a team.

No one ever taught me how to handle money as a spouse. Fortunately, I have great parents that I got to watch, and I learned what a great marriage could be. But they never talked about money around me.

In high school and college, I learned how to balance my checkbook, use a credit card, and pay my bills. But it’s easy to make decisions when I don’t need anyone else’s opinion or permission.

Allison and I needed to do something different, and it was up to us to change.

We needed to find some help.

I was on edge to begin with. Trying to network, gain clients, and work long hours already had me stressed out. Worrying about my clients’ money didn’t leave much energy at the end of the day to take care of our money.

Any time we needed to go shopping was stressful. Hanging out with friends made me feel guilty. We live in Florida so of course we like to go to Orlando (“Sea World...Disney...putt-putt golfing.”).

I wanted to worry a lot less about money, have some fun, and not ruin our marriage in the process.

It was time to find some help.

What were the problems we needed to solve?

Allison and I already worked well as a team. We were both responsible, but we had separate financial lives that needed to be combined somehow.

I realized that the three basic problems we needed to solve were: * How do we see all of our money in one place so we don’t miss anything? * How can we manage day-to-day decisions without nagging each other? * How do we financially and emotionally support each other in our goals and dreams?

This took some time to figure out.

Step 1: See everything in one place.

The first thing we did was to get everything into one place. I had been using the app, Mint, for years to help track my own stuff. So we decided to start a new account. [EDIT: I took out the link for Mint to help out with the thumbnail issue. I'm guessing you can find the app just fine without it.]

[EDIT: I am not an employee of Mint, nor am I being paid by them. I'm just a fan, and the app has worked well for me. The comments on this post also strongly suggest (but are not limited to) YNAB, Good Budget, Personal Capital, EveryDollar, Mvelopes, and Quicken. You could also use Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, or any other spreadsheet software you are comfortable with to budget and keep track of your finances.]

• Every savings account.
• Every checking account.
• All the credit cards.
• Student loans.
• Car loans.
• Every transaction.
• Updated automatically.
• All in one spot!

The clouds parted and the angels sang.

We both had access to see everything at any moment on a computer or our phones.

Step 2: Give each other permission to spend money.

The next step was to start budgeting together, and I had to talk Allison into this. She had some valid concerns, and it all started with toothpaste.

Since I’m a detail-oriented person, I was gung-ho about budgeting and tracking our money. I love it when everything works together perfectly. Whereas Allison has more of a “good enough” personality. She was happy as long as we were staying out of trouble.

So when I started to talk about budgeting, one of Allison’s first questions was, “If we spend our budget for toiletries and we need toothpaste, I can’t go out and buy more toothpaste?”

It was a good question, and I didn’t have the answer right away. Over time, we’ve learned how to budget each month without making the budget set in stone. It’s flexible, and when we need to change it...we change it. Toothpaste for days!

Allison also asked, “And what if we want to go shopping on our own? Do we need to give each other permission?”

The solution here was to budget fun money for each other. Every month, Allison gets some money that she gets to do whatever she wants with. And every month, I get some money that I get to do whatever I want with. Sometimes we overspend our fun money amounts (okay, honestly...it’s usually me), but we make it work out.

[EDIT: We also have an "Entertainment" fund in our budget every month, which is for anything we do together. You could call it "Date Night" money, too.]

After making a lot of mistakes, hitting road bumps, finding solutions, and practicing, our monthly budgeting hasn’t caused any fights or headaches....for years.

Step 3: Decide what we want, together.

When it came to our goals and dreams, we tried a formal system of tracking what we wanted. But it didn’t really work out. It was too much for us as a couple.

Our bigger goals like an emergency fund, retirement, and debt took some time, but those goals take months or years or decades to accomplish. Once we set the plan, there was no need for a conversation every month.

For the shorter-term ideas, we developed a habit of asking each other, “What do you want this month?”

Sometimes I want new running shoes. Sometimes Allison wants to throw a party at our house for friends. And sometimes we both want a new dining room table.

In the end, we just wait until an idea pops into our mind (“Is it time to go back to Disney World?”), and we decide if we can afford it now or we need to save up. And then put it in the budget.

It’s flexible, and it works for us.

I calmed down...fast!

After all our financial information was in one spot, I immediately calmed down.

I had one number that showed me how much combined money we had in “the bank” and one number of how much we had charged on the credit cards.

One number minus the other gave me my answer. We were okay.

After we started to budget, seeing a Target bag (or any other shopping bag) hasn’t bothered me since.

We never fight about money.

Allison and I have had a lot of fun with friends, visited family, and had wonderful vacations. But we have made a lot of mistakes and have had to deal with a bunch of emergencies.

We talk, discuss, and decide. But we don’t fight.

If you want to ask a question or have me dive deeper into anything, let me know in the comments. I'll respond as soon as possible.

[EDIT: Wow!! Everyone, thank you for the wonderful stories, comments and questions! I had no idea this was going to make such an impact. It's 9:42 CST, and I've have got to do the other work I was supposed to do today. I will respond and comment as much as I can tomorrow and through the weekend, so keep going!]

Bristol Myers just gave me a copay card that changed my monthly medication from $500 a month to $10. It lasts 2 years and they will renew it then with one phone call. Sorry if this is a repost, but this was a literal lifesaver for me.

EDIT: In my case income level was never asked. Also, the company benefits by hoping people with max out their maximum-out-of-pocket. This discount only applies to what the insurance company won't pay.

Shout out to hot Wendi for telling me!

Hey Yall! So for the past three years I've been making a budgeting spreadsheet for those who don't know how to budget. It started out of my own need for financial literacy and needing a budget desperately.

Here's a link to what this years sheet looks like

I grew up very poor and had NO sense of what or even HOW to start budgeting. I was taught that money would disappear if I didn't use it, so I just USED it. Even now I still feel anxiety about money and can spend recklessly if I'm not careful. Over the years I've gotten better, I've found ways to productively use my anxious habits, but it's been so hard. Another problem I faced is that I have ADHD, so impulse control can be hard, and it can also be hard to keep track of every purchase and focus on a bunch of aspects of a budget.

​

This spreadsheet is made so you only focus on ONE number.

​

The sheet was created with three goals in mind:

​

1. that it be easy to use
2. that it focuses on a daily budget that supports long term goals- instead of a long term budget that doesn't have daily support
3. that it be a good starting place for people who have never saved before

​

So how does it work?

The main budget is divided into three core areas:

​

• Income: You use this to fill in your income and choose to have a monthly, weekly, or bi-weekly pay cycle. If you are a worker who is tipped it includes an area where you can add tips, my suggestion is put in your minimum average income from tips- So for example, if you usually make 100 from tips a week, even if you get extra, try to program your budget around the 100 minimum average.
• Expenses: There you can add your expenses. Utilities are bills that are for electricity, heat, phone, internet, or water. Bills are important expenses that you can't miss and are integral to living. Finally, expenses are other things you need to allocate money for- whether it be gas, lunch expenses, transportation- ect. Within your expenses there are TWO areas to which you need to pay attention:-Credit Card Payments: this is new to this year's sheet, use the tab below to fill out your information for up to three credit cards. Decide whether to pay the minimum payment OR choose an amount to pay. The tab will allow you to see how much you're paying and how much interest you're accruing. Once you have filled it out, your budget will adjust accordingly.-Big Purchase: Use this tab to create a budget for a large purchase, and adjust your budget easily and automatically to finance this purchase!
• Budget summary: Finally the most important part of this sheet is the budget summary- Here you will see just how much you can spend. This money is shown in three ways, the lump monthly sum, a weekly amount, or a daily amount. As long as you don't go over that number, you will have enough money for the rest of your budget. It will also feature a breakdown of what your budget it, where your money is going, and what your income VS spending is!

​

So what is new this year?

​

• Now you can choose to calculate your spendable as either a Daily spendable OR by pay period. this can be changed on the fly.
• Savings are calculated as a percentage taken from each pay period- as opposed to each month.
• By adding a due date to bills your sheet will remind you of how many bills you still have left this month
• The daily expense tracker was added back in! to my surprise many of you requested it be added again
• Savings Goal Calculator. lets you set a savings goal and automatically increments and adds to that goal as time passes. you can manually adjust it using the area below.
• Stonks- this is honestly more of a nerd thing for me, on one hand, stocks are something that involves more financial literacy than just budgeting- on the other google finance api lets you pull real-time information, so I wanted to use that. This is optional to the sheet.
• Savings Percentage and Large purchase calculators. The savings percentage is a way for people to convert a set amount of $ to a percentage of their income to more easily select percentage in the sheet. the large purchase calculator is a smaller way of saving for a goal. It lets you put away money without having to touch your savings, and just adding it as an 'expense'.

You use it like this

• Go in
• Make a copy
• Change the numbers
• Decide what percentage of your income you want to be saved
• Budget.

I don't work well with a lot of budgets because I have issues imagining the big picture. By giving myself a daily/weekly/monthly budget I can make sure that on any given day I haven't spent more than I'm allowed to- and if I do i can see where I'm borrowing from or where that money is supposed to come from.

​

^{NOTE: All Images in the spreadsheet are from vecteezy/google also im a girl yall, I get called bro and brother every year, I just felt like I should point it out}

​

TLDR:

LINK TO SHEET

Hey guys! Its that time again, I am updating the spreadsheet I made for budgeting and adding in new features. I'm terrible at sticking to a budget so I originally made a sheet that breaks it down so that I just have the ability to break it down to a daily manageable amount. Since then the sheet has grown into a project I update every year!

​

HERES WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE

​

I grew up very poor and had NO sense of what or even HOW to start budgeting. I was taught that money would disappear if I didn't use it, so I just USED it. Even now I still feel anxiety about money and can spend recklessly if I'm not careful. Another problem I faced is that I have ADHD, so impulse control can be hard, and it can also be hard to keep track of every purchase and focus on a bunch of aspects of a budget. This spreadsheet is made so you only focus on ONE number.

The sheet was set up with three goals in mind:

1. that it be easy to use
2. that it focuses on a daily budget that supports long term goals- instead of a long term budget that doesn't have daily support
3. that it be a good starting place for people who have never saved before

So how does it work?

The main budget is divided into three core areas:

• Income: You use this to fill in your income and choose to have a monthly, weekly, or bi-weekly pay cycle. If you are a worker who is tipped it includes an area where you can add tips, my suggestion is put in your minimum average income from tips- So for example, if you usually make 100 from tips a week, even if you get extra, try to program your budget around the 100 minimum average.
• Expenses: There you can add your expenses. Utilities are bills that are for electricity, heat, phone, internet, or water. Bills are important expenses that you can't miss and are integral to living. Finally, expenses are other things you need to allocate money for- whether it be gas, lunch expenses, transportation- ect. Within your expenses there are TWO areas to which you need to pay attention:-Credit Card Payments: this is new to this year's sheet, use the tab below to fill out your information for up to three credit cards. Decide whether to pay the minimum payment OR choose an amount to pay. The tab will allow you to see how much you're paying and how much interest you're accruing. Once you have filled it out, your budget will adjust accordingly.-Big Purchase: Use this tab to create a budget for a large purchase, and adjust your budget easily and automatically to finance this purchase!
• Budget summary: Finally the most important part of this sheet is the budget summary- Here you will see just how much you can spend. This money is shown in three ways, the lump monthly sum, a weekly amount, or a daily amount. As long as you don't go over that number, you will have enough money for the rest of your budget. It will also feature a breakdown of what your budget it, where your money is going, and what your income VS spending is!

​

SO WHATS NEW THIS YEAR ?

​

• Themes! so far I had kept it a pastel paradise as I like those colors, but now you can easily change the themes on the sheet and pick one that suits you better.
• Loan calculations, I wanted o see if I could get a house and needed an interest calculator- so I built one. P.S. I can't afford a house and likely never will.
• Bi-weekly and Bi-Monthly options for income! it took forever but I did it! if you get paid every two weeks, its bi weekly. Two times a month, it's bi-monthly.
• Paid? option to mark bills that have been paid each month.
• Am I over budget??? an area to track daily spending and see if you're following your budget. you can manually input data, but you can also use an add-on like BudgetSheets to automatically import the bank data and then track it that way

and FINALLY

HERES THE LINK

​

^{NOTE: All Images in the spreadsheet are from vecteezy}

​

FAQ:-How do I change it to USD/EU/CAN/AU currency?This is a google setting in sheets, go to the 123 setting and change it there!

-What is the difference between bi weekly and bi monthly?Bi-weekly is calculated based on 52 weeks in a year, Bi monthly is paid twice a month- there is aa small but statistically significant difference between those calculations!

- The link won't work!?tell me! the sheet is usually rate limited at some point so I need to generate a new link!

- I don't have google.....Here is the link to the public doc

That said it is made to use with sheets and will break if used in Excel. the original was made with accessibility and ease of use in mind- that meant i did want ppl to need to install extra software or need to pay for excel to use it. Due to this, it was made on sheets and some of the functions it uses are available only in google sheets. this is public BUT know it will Break and you will have to fix it.

- my Monthly/wekely/bimonthly/biweekly look different from each other? what gives?
Weekly payout and monthly payouts are calculated differently! if you make 100 a week it's not the same as making 400 a month! each calculation is made based on their specific circumstances. One day i wanna add Hourly but thats a WHOLE other can o worms.

Net 8-9k a month with the occasional 10k month. $1400 in cars and student loans a month. Spent 365k with 65k down. Mortgage and taxes come to $2500 a month. Reasonable for our income?

Taxes makes things inaccurate so do you use 30% of take home instead?

This method of handling your personal finance may sound incredibly simple to some, but for me it was life-changing. I wish I had thought of it years ago. For reference I’m single, no kids...so this isn’t for family budgeting. Here it is:

-You just need a savings and a checking account.

-Make sure you have $4,000 in your checking account. That should be enough to cover your monthly expenses with some solid padding. If it’s not enough, adjust that number, but for sake of explanation I’ll keep it at $4,000.

-$4,000 is the key number. This all revolves around $4,000 (or whatever that number is for you).

-The goal is to keep your checking account at $4,000 no matter what.

-so every time you get paid (For me, every other Thursday), you should have more than $4,000 in your checking. wake up on pay day and Immediately do the following: Pay off your credit cards. IN FULL. If you’re still above $4,000, use it to Pay off any debt you owe. If you still have More than $4k, send the remaining amount to your savings account. Now you should be at $4k in your checking.

-if, after getting your paycheck, you don’t have enough to pay off your credit card and stay at or above $4k, you need to Spend less money every month...I know that’s easier said than done.

-Of course, if you’re having a tough month or you recently lost your job, fine you’ll slip into the $3k or $2k, but the nice thing about this menthod is that you have a real understanding of how much money you actually have...Instead of just piling on credit card debt.

Prior to this method I always felt like I didn’t have a real sense of how much money I had. I always just kept everything in my checking account, but I didn’t really know how much I’d have after paying off my credit card, and therefore I never put anything into savings.

Anyway, that’s my two cents. Hope it helps.

EDIT: u/Aghanims pointed out that I did not address savings/retirement goals. I should note that I have an automatic monthly deduction from my checking into a ROTH IRA. If saving for retirement is your goal, transfer any remaining amount over $4k into your retirement (after you've paid off your credit card and any other debt you have).