Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The Frugal Money Manager On Google Talk!

I am excited to introduce a new feature to The Frugal Money Manager, and that is Google Talk. I will be setting times that I will be logged onto Google Talk to help you with any questions you may have or if you need help with your budgeting/financial questions. I am in no way a financial guru, but I do have some education in the financial field, as I am going to school for Finance. My e-mail address (thefrugalmoneymanager@gmail.com) is my username.

I will be getting back with you on what times I will be available!

Budget Basics: Part 2

As I stated in Part 1 of this post, when you start your budget you want to over estimate on expenses, and under estimate on income. Of course, doing this will make your budget much smoother. If you end up spending just a little bit more than what your actual expenses are, then, it's not a big deal, and if you end up getting more income than you thought, well that is always a good thing, of course.

Step One: Figure Out Your Expenses

Make two columns, one titled "Expenses" and the other one "Income." Work with your expenses first. Make sure to include everything, including Christmas savings, car registration fees (both of these can be split into twelve months so you don't have to budget for everything right now), groceries, gas, car insurance, life insurance, etc. Sometimes you might forget about something and only know about it when it comes out of your checking account. Don't panic, just make sure you add it into your budget. Here are some tips:

  • Over estimate on gas, groceries, electricity, and other things that can fluctuate. As the saying goes, "It's better to have too much than not enough."
  • As stated in the first part of this post, the extra amounts will roll over in the YNAB categories each month to make a reserve for when expenses are a little more than previous months.
  • Make a "blow fund" account for you and your spouse, if you are married. This account should be small (we only put $25 in each of our blow fund accounts every two weeks) if you are still in debt. I will discuss the function of this a little further down in this post.
  • Don't forget maintenance/repairs! Make sure you allow for such expenses. It doesn't have to be too much at first, but make sure you do budget something for both categories. Some of the larger expenses (transmission goes out, furnace stops working) will be covered in your emergency fund (I will discuss this in another post), but the oil is going to need changed in the car, salt is going to need to be added to the softener, etc. You will have small repairs, so make sure you budget for these.
After all of your expenses are written down, move on to Step 2...

Step 2: Figure Out Your Income

This may be a little more difficult to figure out if you don't have a steady income. My husband gets paid a certain amount every two weeks, but he usually gets a bunch of overtime, so we aren't sure what his paychecks will be, but we make our expenses according to normal paychecks, not overtime paychecks (again, under estimate income). If he ends up getting overtime, we use the extra toward debt, savings, a nice meal out, etc. If he doesn't, our expenses are still covered.

If you work part-time and only get a few hours a week, try to figure out what the least amount of hours you will get will be (i.e., if you are supposed to get 15-25 hours a week, figure out your paycheck based on a 15 hour week). If you work full time, but your paychecks still fluctuate from month to month, take the least amount you would make.

Don't forget to add your spouses income, too. I will be honest here, I do not agree with spouses who separate their incomes (I will end it there). And if you do separate the incomes, it doesn't mean you can't have a decent budget. Just make sure you know what you have to cover and your spouse has to cover.

Once this is done, move on to Step 3...

Step 3: To Freak Out, Or Not Freak Out?

Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly! This is the part where many people start to freak out because they realize that their expenses are much more than their income per month, especially when you add in Christmas savings, heating savings, car registration, etc., stuff that isn't normally spent per month but now you are trying to save for so credit cards and savings accounts don't have to be drained later. How in the world are we living like this? you might be thinking. This is what is called living paycheck-to-paycheck, and a majority of Americans live like this, and the amount of income doesn't matter. There are people who make $30,000 a year who live like this, and people making $3,000,000 a year who do the same. One just has more stuff than the other. And you most likely realize this isn't healthy at all.... stress, lack of sleep, marital strain, etc., can all come from this life style, especially when an emergency happens, like an injury that might put you out of work, loss of a job, loss of a spouse, transmission or engine blowing, furnace breaking down, and several other scenarios. These things will happen, you can count on that.

The good news is you are taking a step in the right direction by planning out a budget. The budget is the most important step you will make for your financial future. Everything revolves around this... from how much you can give to charity to how much you can invest to how much you can spend tomorrow at Starbucks.

Take a few more deep breaths and move onto Step 4...

Step 4: Figuring Out How to Decrease Your Expenses and/or Increase Your Income

Decrease Expenses
The easiest part here would be to decrease your expenses, but it might take some sacrifice. Do you really need the cable/satellite? Or that expensive cell phone plan? Or that vehicle you may have just bought? Or the gas hog? You might be answering, "Yes," to all of these questions, but the truth is you really do not need any of those. They are wants, not needs. I'm going to give some examples of how to get your monthly expenses down in a later post because I don't want this one to get too long. I will say somethings are not pleasant to do, but cutting temporarily will allow you to be more comfortable when you can have it later.

I will make a separate post about this, but one thing I do want to stress is never go cheap on insurance. Always make sure your insurance is adequate. I'll name some of the things we've done to make sure we're adequately covered in a separate post.

Increase Income
This one may be a little more difficult. You can sell something, have a garage sale, work some overtime if your work offers it, get a temporary (yes, I will stress that) second job, change your withholding status, have your kids get summer jobs to pay for their own gas/insurance for those months, and I'm sure there are several other things you can do to increase your income, but again, the easiest thing to do is cut expenses. If you are unwilling to cut your expenses, then you'll most likely have to find a way to increase your income, so you can always brainstorm ideas. I will make a separate post that goes over this more in depth, too.

Hopefully after this step you will find your deficit (if you had one) much smaller or perhaps disappeared if you can just cut out a few things or increase your income. It is at this point that you can move onto the final step of setting up your budget.

Step 5: Using a Tool to Input and Maintain Your Budget

If you have been reading this blog, you know I am a strong supporter of a budget software called You Need A Budget (YNAB). It is, in my opinion, the best budgeting software out there. It doesn't mean there aren't others that are nice, too, but I still prefer YNAB. It combines the zero-based and envelope methods all into one program, and you can generate reports to track your progress. Here is a video... if you want to check out the 7 day free trial, click here.


The more you will learn about this program, the more you will love it. It teaches you real budgeting with the ultimate goal toward real financial freedom.

Of course, you can always make your own spreadsheets, but it is incredibly time consuming. It's also difficult to add and take away categories, especially factoring in all the calculations and things you need to add in every time. YNAB is easy. It's clean. It's, again in my opinion, the best resource out there.

You simply take the categories you don't need away, and enter the ones you do need in. Then you enter your account balances and start budgeting. And then congratulate yourself for taking such a big step toward financial independence: setting up your budget.

Of course, there will be more explanation in the next post specifically on maintaining your budget through YNAB.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Budget Basics: Part 1

This post is going to focus on the basics of budgeting. When you set up a budget you want to always over estimate your expenses, and under estimate your income. This probably seems fairly logical, but it is necessary to point out. You will also need a method for keeping track of your expenditures and income(s). While I am sure there are several "methods" for keeping track of a budget, I am going to go over the ones I use because out of everything we have tried, we believe it's by far the best way to make an awesome budget.

Don't Be Overwhelmed

Starting off it can be a bit scary, especially if you find out you have more going out than coming in. It's OK, but the goal, obviously, is to make it the opposite. Don't expect to start out making a perfect budget, either. There will be times when you overspend, and that is OK, but focus on not making it a habit. There will be times when you forget and get behind, and that is also OK, just focus on being more consistent.

I recommend (and I believe YNAB does as well) working on your budget every single day (the first day will take the longest) for about two weeks because it will become more of a habit. Now, some days will only take a few minutes to input transactions, and others will take longer when you have more bills to pay. After the two week period, drop it down to a couple days a week, then maybe one day a week. I personally work on our budget about every 3-4 days so I don't get too behind, and so I don't have to make it an all-day event. Consistency at managing your budget is important, but don't fret if you get too far behind, just do what you can to catch up.

Zero-Based Budgeting

This blog will use the zero-based budget model, which is wonderfully demonstrated using the YNAB software. I want to start off by first saying that looking at your checkbook balance is not an efficient way to budget. Sure you might have some money in there, but a checking account balance is so misleading, especially if you forget about a bill that is due, or if you are not good at keeping a balanced register with you at all times. Also, if you have ever had your heart sink after checking your account balance and realizing you spent much more than you thought you did, you will also understand why this is not a great method of budgeting.

The zero-based budgeting method basically takes your checking account balance and separates it into categories so every dollar has an assignment. Now, instead of looking at your checking account, you will look at your category balance. Let me give you an example: Let's say you have $1,000 in your checking account right now, and since you are a seasoned budgeter (and you will get there), you have assigned your dollars to sit and wait for specific functions. So your budget may look similar to this:

Car Payment: $200
Gas: $200
Groceries: $200
Restaurants: $70
Christmas: $100
Blow Fund: $50
Car Registrations: $180

If you added up all of those categories, they equal $1,000, which is exactly what your checking account balance shows. Instead of randomly going out and making a large purchase because you just looked at your checking account balance, you have a category balance to spend from. So, if you need groceries, you know you have $200 to work with, not a full $1,000. The same for restaurants. If you want to go out for a nice dinner, you have $70 to work with, not $1,000.

This will help you not only save for larger purchases in the future, but also help with over spending... and because of this method, your checking account balance will continue to keep growing, yet every single dollar will be accounted for by your budget categories. That is the zero-based method.

Envelope System Method

Another great feature of YNAB is the use of a sort of "envelope" system. The envelope system was sort of explained in the last section. Many financial gurus recommend this system because by setting up envelopes for each area of your budget, you assign what you have to spend to each envelope, and can only spend that amount. If you look back at the example of the budget in the last section, the "envelope" would be considered the different categories, (i.e., Car Payment, Gas, Groceries, Restaurants, Christmas, Blow Fund, and Car Registration). Each envelope gets a set amount per month (or per paycheck if you're just starting out in your budget), and that is all you have available to spend for either the month or the pay period. The great things about the envelope system is what is left in the envelope carries over to the next month.

YNAB uses a sort-of digital envelope system, where the envelopes have what you have budgeted, what you have spent, and the balance of each "envelope" (which we will call category from now on). Whatever is left goes into the category balance for the next month. This is great for saving for things like Christmas, a new car, car repairs, house repairs, gas, groceries, etc., and it's best to let certain categories roll-over each month, yet add the same amount that you want to budget right back in each month as well. I'll give you an example.

Let's say you have $300 a month budgeted for gas, but you only spend $200. Your category balance will be $100. I recommend adding $300 again the next month so your starting balance is now $400 instead of the normal $300. Vacations, summer time trips, unexpected family hospitalizations, etc., usually all happen. If you let your extra roll over each month, yet keep budgeting the same, you will have a reserve set aside for gas just in case something unexpected happens, or if you want to have the extra to go on a vacation or a day trip somewhere. If you budgeted $300 every month, yet only spent $200 for 6 months, you will have $600 in your gas reserve by the 6th month, plus the $300 new budgeted amount, making your gas balance a whopping $900. (Can you see how your checkbook balance will grow now?)

I recommend allowing this roll over for several other categories like the following:
  • Groceries: Most people have cookouts, camping trips, and other activities in the summer, as well as holidays and family meals in the winter. It's nice to have the extra money left in reserve to make up for these events, or when there is a meat or canned good stock up sale.
  • Electricity: For most people, the electric bill is much more during the summer than in the winter. We usually pay about $150 in the summer (depending) and about $100 in the winter, so we try to budget $130 all year long. While in the winter, our category balance rolls over each month to make up for the extra spent during the summer later on.
  • Christmas: This method works great for saving for big holidays like Christmas. If you set your budget in the beginning of each year you just divide by 12, then save that amount per month and let it roll over until December. It's pretty simple, really.
Those are just three that came to mind right away, but I'm sure you can find several more. There are, however, certain times where you can adjust your budget amount according to what you spent, so one month you may budget less than you did another month. This may sound confusing, so I'll give you an example that just happened recently with us.

Our Internet bill is straight up $50. Not $51.45, just $50. So, I budget every month for $50 exactly. Because we recommended a few people to the service, we got $30 knocked off our bill for this month, so our bill was $20. I had two choices: either I could leave the $30 in that category to roll over to next month, or I could just drop by budgeted amount by $30 for the month. So, basically it was either save $30 this month or next month. I decided to save it this month to add to something else to get some of our debt paid down. In this case, it isn't necessary to just keep the $30 in the category balance and add $50 next month to make the balance $80. Since we have great Internet service, our bill is never higher, and it isn't a debt, so it's not like I could use the extra to pay that bill down. In these cases, you can just take the $30 out of your budget for this month, or only budget $20 extra for next month.

All I am trying to say with this is there are some things you want to roll over each month, but some things aren't necessary, and you will learn what you should or shouldn't let roll over. It won't be perfect right away! When I first started to budget, I probably would've rolled over all of my categories, but if you still have debt, you want to pick and choose what you want to roll over and what you don't. There's no need in rolling over the things that are not necessary if you can use the extra to help get out of debt (I will give methods on debt management and pay off in another blog post later).

I will end this post now, and tomorrow I hope to post Part 2. Please feel free to comment or e-mail if you are confused about anything. Sometime's it's hard to visualize something through typed words!

Changing the Reputation of the Budget

The budget has gotten a bad reputation. Some feel saying, "It's not in the budget," means they can't afford it. Most people really don't like to admit they can't afford something, so they think if you are on a budget, it means you don't make a lot of money and can't afford stuff. This couldn't be further from the truth! Being on a budget just means you want to keep track of what is going out (expenditures or outflows) and what is coming in (income or inflows). It means that you are wanting to control your money, and not wanting to let your money control YOU. Sure, it might mean that you don't have the necessary amount of cash available at the time to make a big purchase, but this is different than not being able to afford it. Let me explain.

Having a Budget vs. Not Having a Budget

Frank wants to buy a new refrigerator for $1499 plus tax ($1588.94 with a 6% sales tax). But Frank doesn't have a budget. In fact, he has about $457 left to his name. But, he wants a new refrigerator, and he wants it NOW. Frank makes a net pay of around $3000 a month, but his bills total to around $2875. Again, Frank doesn't have a budget so he doesn't know what it means to overspend in categories, but he does it every month. His actual monthly obligations are $2875, but he spends closer to $3200, and uses his credit card when he doesn't have the cash available, which makes not only his debt higher, but also his monthly obligations. The one thing Frank has going for him is his credit score. He always makes his payments on time (sometimes this isn't the easiest thing), so his credit is outstanding. So, of course he wants to finance his refrigerator! Frank gets approved for the full amount, and learns he has 6 months no interest. He thinks to himself, "Sure, I can pay this of in 6 months." Of course, Frank doesn't pay it off in 6 months, so now his monthly obligations are higher, and his interest rate is above 20% for his credit card, and he ends up paying much more than he should for his fridge. He couldn't pay it off without paying interest because he has no idea what is coming in and going out. He thought he was doing fine until he found out he couldn't get the extra to pay the debt off in the no-interest period. It will be several months now until Frank can pay off his refrigerator. Had Frank had a budget set up, he would've realized he was overspending and didn't have the extra to put toward buying a fridge. He could afford the minimum payment, sure, but he couldn't really afford the fridge because he didn't have control over his expenses.

Now, meet Bob. Bob wants to buy the same exact model fridge as Frank, totaling to $1588.94 after tax. Bob also makes a net pay of $3000, but he has a strict budget, so his expenses every month are around $2200. He's been saving to put a down payment on a house, but would like to stop saving for few months to be able to buy the fridge, so he finds out the price, figures out what he needs to do, and saves $800 for two months, totaling $1600, and he goes and buys the fridge outright with money left over. No monthly minimum payments, no new debt, and his expenses are still $2200. The next month Bob continues to save for a down payment on his house. Now, Bob's fridge wasn't an emergency, so he didn't take it out of his emergency fund. It also wasn't part of his house down payment, so he didn't take any from that account either. He knew what he wanted and adjusted his budget accordingly.

Now That Was Easy, Right?

No, budgeting for beginners isn't that easy. It doesn't just happen that you have all of that extra money to be able to save for something like that. In the example, Bob was a seasoned budgeter. He had been living with his budget for quite some time, so he knew what he didn't have the money right then and there. It didn't mean he couldn't afford it. He very well could afford it; he just didn't have the full amount to spend right then and there, so he made it so he did.

When you begin to budget, your budget will not be perfect. You might end up finding out you spend more than you earn. And that is OK. You might find you that you overspend in several categories. And that is OK. You will learn to adjust when that happens. Even seasoned budgeters can overspend. It doesn't mean that you failed, it just means that you have to just go with things when they happen and adjust.

My goal is to change the reputation of the budget. No longer do I want people to cringe when they hear the word "budget." I also don't want anyone to judge another person for saying, "That's not in the budget." Having a budget doesn't always mean you can't afford it - sometimes it will, and sometimes it won't. It just means you are wanting to take control of your finances so you are learning to live within your means. I congratulate you on taking the first step toward financial freedom!

Purpose of This Blog

I absolutely love to budget. It thrills me. I know some of you may be thinking I am a little insane, but I really do find pleasure in not only managing but also finding ways to save money. That being said, I am not the most frugal person in the world, I'm ashamed to admit. But the further I get in life, the more ways I am finding to save money, and I want to be able to share that with others.

Here is a little background on me. I am currently 26 years old, and I am a stay-at-home mom to a beautiful little girl named Ellie who just turned two last month (March). I like to say I am taking the scenic route to getting my college degree. I started off at a community college wanting to get my degree in Graphic Designing. That turned into wanting to be a Secondary Education teacher majoring in English and minoring in Mathematics, which later turned into me wanting to be an Pediatric Oncologist because I loved studying anatomy and physiology, and I wanted to help sick children. I was well on my way to starting that career when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. A couple weeks later I had my head in a bucket throwing up everything I ate with a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum which lasted 5 months until I got it under control with medication. Needless to say, I didn't finish that degree.

Since my husband had landed a great job while I was pregnant, we decided to have me stay home. He was in charge of making the money, and I was in charge of paying the bills and managing the budget. The budget. We had never had one before, and I had no idea how to make one. I basically just wrote what I wanted to spend and then our expenses after that and subtracted it. If I was over budget, I guess I would fix it the following month. I spent hours upon hours creating spreadsheets that added up across multiple pages with my checking account balance, savings account balances, expenditures by month and week, income by month and week, bills due, etc. The problem was every time I wanted to add something new or delete something, I needed to almost redo the whole spreadsheet, so I gave up and tried doing everything on paper. I would lose the paper or forget bills, and I wasn't consistent because it took FOREVER to continue to manage a system like that.

I wasn't keeping track of how much we were spending; I was just making sure we didn't overspend and overdraft. We weren't saving in advance for larger purchases, we didn't have a big savings account because we kept spending everything we had, we weren't disciplined in categories like groceries or gas because we didn't set a limit... we just set what we wanted to spend, but didn't look at it as a "limit". And when we overspend in several categories, we just overspent in those categories forever; we never paid it back so we could be back on budget because we never thought of that.

A little over a year ago, someone posted a Facebook status about a book called Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey, and I decided to check it out. I think I read it in a day and a half. Everything just made sense to me on how to manage my money. We started to follow the program, but the one thing that bothered me is budgeting was stressed, and they had techniques for managing a budget, but there wasn't a real program they recommended to use, and the budgeting software that was on the Dave Ramsey site was not helpful at all. I knew HOW to budget, but I just needed a tool that was easy to use to help me MAINTAIN it.

There are several tools out there. Some are free, and someone you have to pay for. Some have more features, others have less. It would be wonderful to take all of the great features each one has to offer and combine them into ONE tool, and though there really isn't anything out there that does that yet, there is one software program that I have found to be the best tool out there to help manage your money. That program is YNAB (You Need A Budget).

This program combines the zero balance based budget (every dollar needs a job) with the envelope system (amounts in each category roll over into the following month), which creates a wonderful system that can help you manage your money. I love it so much I have decided to create this blog which will focus just on YNAB because it is such a wonderful program. I have also created a budget service where I can help people set up and manage their budgets, give tips for saving money, find things they can cut out of the budget, help manage and pay off debt, etc. I will be using the Dropbox tool to help those manage their budget. I will make another post about this later.

These two things (Dave Ramsey and YNAB) have inspired me to become a financial advisor. I am going to use my budgeting service as part of my portfolio, because I believe a budget is the single most important thing you need to use in order to become financially free. I hope you can use this blog as a tool to help you and your family manage their money. Please feel free to contact me at any time if you would like some help. Like I said, budgeting thrills me!