I'm not completely sure if what I do can be considered a budget. I'm always looking for easier ways, and the way I'm currently doing things has been working for the past year. It has definitely been tweaked, and I'm still tweaking things today.
I'm paid twice a month, the 15th and 30th. Weekends and holidays juggle the payday at times but that's the schedule we stick to. All of my bills, minus food and gasoline, add up to $1286 a month. I figure $1300 for a round number and for a just in case scenario. Those bills, divided by 2, gives me $650. Everything over that amount is withdrawn from my account, and is money that goes to food, gas, haircuts, and general items for the house and my personal "needs." While that doesn't give me a complete look at where my money is going, it works.
I have my retirement automatically withdrawn from my check so that's taken care of. In my case, however, you're not given the option with the state to put in retirement or not. So for some, that may not be enough. I was heavily searching into IRA's when I got a statement yesterday detailing what an old 401(k) account I had was worth. I had completely forgot about this. It's only worth about $250 (wasn't at that job long!) but I have it there so rolling it over is an option. Plus, it's through INGDirect, and that's where my savings account is through. For my next post, I'll be blogging about how I actually go about paying Mr. Bill.
OK, I remember your blog now. For some reason I thought you had deleted an old blog and just started a new one. I see now that you only re-faced it and picked up after a long absence. I had you on my blogroll for the longest time but you were at the bottom of the sidebar list of blogs because you had not updated. The last post was about legal loansharking. I think I finally deleted you because I thought your blog was defunct, but you've gotta give me credit for the fact that after two years I didn't think you were coming back! :o) Glad you did! I think you get the prize for longest leave of absence on an active blog!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I would very much like it if our pay came in twice a month on set dates like you have it. We get the biweekly pay which is a big PITB for purposes of scheduling what needs to be paid. If we had enough flexibility to just pile money into a slush fund and pay bills with a set amount of money every 15th and 30th to simulate bi-monthly pay, I would do it, but I never like to leave a spare penny sitting around so I play a constant scheduling game based on when the pay comes in.
ReplyDeleteYay! A Prize! I should have someone make me a badge to put on my blog lol! No worries on the defunct blog deal, It's been a wild ride trying to do the behind the scenes stuff on getting a blog running, you know that deal! My wife is paid every two weeks, so I do have that to deal with, so far she's gotten paid almost every week I have so that's nice. You're like my wife in a way, she don't like to leave a penny sitting around either, except in the bad way!!!
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