A little bit of background on me. I make a good salary at almost 70k but I was finding myself dead broke half way into each pay pay every single month. I was racking up a 5-10 NSF fee's each month and then mindlessly using my credit cards when I was out of money in my bank account. I was also mindlessly spending money on food and things from Amazon with no disregard to my account.
It felt so overwhelming to come up with a "budget" or be one of those "spreadsheet people" but I finally did it. I have had one too many close calls with not being able to pay my $1,000 rent because my balance was so negative leading up to the 1st. I ended up borrowing money a lot from my S/O just to cover things.
Here are some things I did but I want to learn more about the discipline of money management.
The first thing required is what absolutely sucked the most and kept keeping me from starting time and time again. I had to go through all my bank statements and credit card statements to figure out exactly what was billing me and write that down somewhere. I decided on a Google Doc. It took days upon days as I hated doing it and the spreadsheet I came up with was absolutely butt ugly with random colored blocks and no organization. I also had to reset a lot of passwords and tidy up my LastPass but now I had a starting point of Bill type, Company Name, Due Date, Statement Date, Auto-Pay Status, Payment Method, and URL.
The process got easier and easier as I hummed along. Here are some of the things I did.
- Disabled each and every one of my auto-payments. 90% of them I could do online, a few I had to call, and a few I surprisingly found out I could not disable at all -> Google Fi cell phone service. This took another several days as well and basically sucks. It is well worth it though.
- Cancelled a TON of unneeded services and subscriptions. Things I literally never use. Hulu, Evernote, Stupid things that I signed up for a free trial and just let them bill me endlessly.
- Paid my bills manually for the first time ever! My spreadsheet sucked and really slowed down the process.
- I re-made the spread sheet and broke it into two halves. Bills due 1st-14th and bills due 15-31st. My plan is to twice a month, the 1st and 15th, log into each site and just submit a payment for what's due after reviewing the statement. (I never reviewed statements before!.)
- I can now add up the costs of what my compulsory bills are for each half of the month and see how much money I should have left for all other expenses that are not bills. When I add up both halves I actually have over $1,700 dollars left to budget for the entire month. I know this can get eaten up quick by food, gas, and other expenses but at least I have a good number now.
- I signed up for YNAB to manage the day to day spending and it is awesome. This really is helping me budget for what I have and not what I might have.
Some stuff I am doing now
- Added a YNAB category called Stupid Spending and now track all of the stupid things I have spent money on that I want to cut off. I keep a second tab in the spreadsheet called Spending reduction plan to figure out where I can cut service costs or make a plan to stop stupid spending.
- Figuring out what my one month's cost of living is and start working towards saving the one months paycheck buffer. My goal is to have all my money for the month and log in on the 1st and pay every single one of my bills! Psychological freedom!
- Start saving for retirement and a 6-month income saved. This seems daunting at nearly $30,000 for the 6-months of income.
- Stopping impulse buying and fast food purchases. It hurts a lot more when you're spending your own cash and not just a credit card.
- Stop adding more to my credit cards!
- Added another spreadsheet tab with all my credit card balances, interest rates, and how much I was being charged for interest. I was surprised to find them as high as $70 in interest!!
- Begin prioritizing paying off the card pegging me for the most interest dollars a month, and then the next, and the next.
Now that I have the spreadsheet and YNAB I feel like I'm actually steering the ship.
It's an amazing feeling to know that all your bills are paid and nothing else will be automatically billing you and over drafting your account. I actually received a one time medical bill today and I was able to immediately login with confidence in myself and pay it and add it to YNAB.
Long time budgeters and financiers please give me advice, tips or material to read to learn more!
Submitted November 03, 2018 at 04:33AM by an_idiot_with_money https://ift.tt/2Rw1u4g
