My husband and I have been living together for 6 years, and now married for 6 months. Before we were married, we didn't have any kind of budget, or a set way of paying bills. It was mainly 'this bill is due, but we only have this much in our account, we'll pay the rest when we get paid next', or we would totally forget about a bill until it was too late and became a huge bill. We were late on rent, our electric had been shut off a couple times, and we always seemed to have no money. We spent too much on things we "needed" or wanted, and let the bills be paid after that stuff.
Now that we're married and decided to combine bank accounts and income, I've taken over our financial situation and it's working out so well. We still have money to buy things we want, but all of our bills are always paid on time. We even pay extra on things like my credit card and his truck payment, and have actually started to put money into savings!
I have a bill calendar. I print out 6 months of blank calendars. On them, I write down which days we get paid, how much each paycheck is, what bills are due when, and how much each bill is. Then, I color code each paycheck to what bills will be paid with those paychecks. At the top, I write how much we have leftover in each paycheck after all the bills are paid.
This doesn't count things that vary like gas, food, and entertainment, but I leave enough left over each paycheck/month that we can afford these things. I mainly wanted to make sure every bill that we have is paid on time.
When payday comes, I look at that paycheck on the calendar and what bills need to be paid with that check. I transfer the combined amount of the bills to a separate bank account, and pay them all from there. Anything leftover in our regular checking account is ours to spend. If we still have enough left right before the next payday, more goes into savings, car payment, or credit card.
I'm so proud of myself for getting organized, and I feel like we actually have money now. If anyone has any tips on how I can improve this system, feel free to let me know!
Submitted January 21, 2018 at 03:56PM by Ncoll612 http://ift.tt/2DlweOJ
