The Money Post

Things with yesterday's bloodwork looked great. 1858 for 5w2days.

Now onto the topic. Money.

I've been helping a friend get all of her financial affairs in order; mainly because I find it infuriating when people don't balance and reconcile their checkbooks. She has never followed a budget and she has not been paying attention to how she has been spending her money. She has to provide annual financial statements to the local court to prove that she is using her military death benefits in a good way instead of taking advantage of them. She may have to do this because there was no will found. Either way, she has been stressed about this.

Since the beginning of the year I have been reconciling her checkbook for her and being a hardass whenever she goes shopping. She asked me to so I'm not stepping on her toes. I told her that E and I follow a budget and she asked if I could put her on one as well.

When E and I first got married, we had a 3 bedroom apartment that we shared with another married couple. A few months into the arrangement they were looking for another place and getting ready to move out. This kind of caught E and I by surprise and it was going to leave us in a bind because we had all decided to get the place together and split all expenses. It was a bad decision in the first place, but we made it nonetheless. When we found out we were going to be stuck with all the bills ourselves, we sat down with the trusty Microsoft Office Excel program and designed a budget. We had an 'average' column that had numbers of what we thought we would be spending, and then following columns detailed the months of the year, and the numbers that we actually spend in each category.

Categories consisted of 1st and 2nd half months of bills. Power, water, food, entertainment, vehicle payment, gas, phone, insurance, gifts, dining, and miscellaneous. There are more categories, but you get the idea. We programmed all of the equations which means we only have to type in the numbers and everything is done automatically. The amount paid for bills is deducted from the total and residual income and we have an ending balance every month that carries over.

I love following this budget and it makes it very easy for E and me to see exactly how much money we have and where we need to cut back. It also helps us to plan for the future because we can see how much we have left at the end of the month and we can move that directly to savings. It has helped so much and E and I have never had a fight about money (in almost 9 years) or how we are going to pay bills. We are able to keep each other in check and we talk regularly about where we stand and what our next goals should be.

If you don't have a budget, I highly advise starting one. And if you aren't saving for the future, I advise that as well.

What financial quirks have worked or do work for you now?