Binders, Budgets, Bills... Oh My!

Being newly married and buying a house created the necessity for us to build a new family budget. I am very blessed to have a husband who thinks the same way about money as I do. We’re not afraid to spend it in smart ways but are always looking for a bargain or a way to save a few pennies. I came across a blog post from Toni at A Bowl Full of Lemons that gave a great week-long tutorial on creating a budget binder. I took this project and ran with it and we now have a successful working budget for our family.

I highly recommend following the original week-long tutorial if you are interested in putting together this binder. Here, I've simply summarized my process and how we tweaked it to fit our needs. 

Using Microsoft Excel, I created a workbook with many tabbed worksheets. First, I started by gathering all of our account information for each bill paying account we were responsible for. I made a list of each company, their phone number and website, our account number, our online user name and password, our monthly payment amount and due date, and the frequency of that payment (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc). 

Next I put together a list of monthly due dates for each expense to better track what bills would need to be paid from what paycheck each month.

Saving money is hard. But tracking savings makes it more of a fun challenge. I created a worksheet to track our income as Toni suggests, but I also added a Savings Tracking sheet. The Mr. and I have several things that we are saving for including his tuition, a truck, and a remodeling project for our basement. Seeing our savings grow each month provides great motivation and helps us to contribute as much as we can to these funds so that we can write in larger numbers at the end of each month on our worksheet. 

While saving is difficult, paying off debt also presents a challenge. I created a worksheet listing our debts so that we could track their payoff. This worked miracles as we paid off my student loan debt in a matter of months simply because we were tired of it showing up on this chart.

Toni adds a step in creating an annual expense worksheet in which all annual expenses are listed and then divided by 12 to determine how much to set aside each month so when the bills come due, the funds are there to pay it. Auto registration fees, warranty fees, and our snowplow service are just a few examples of these types of expenses. When my birthday comes around next year, I won’t be sidetracked by that notice of renewal for my auto registration anymore. I’ll have the money already saved to just pay the bill and move on!

Lastly, I created a sheet of minimum monthly expenses and then an average monthly budget. The binder holds tabs for each month so at the beginning of each month we tweak our monthly budget to fit that particular month’s estimated income and expenses.

Here are some benefits of having this budget binder:
 
•    It has helped us track (and increase) our debt payoff. We are using Dave Ramsey's Snowball method but any plan helps.
 
•    Tracking our savings has caused us to second guess unnecessary spending, knowing that if we save that $10 on popcorn at the movies, our truck savings fund will go up.
 
•    The flexibility to adjust our budget each month while maintaining our savings and monthly fixed expenses is so helpful. Some months we may know the dog needs to go to the vet so we increase our spending there and decrease it somewhere else, like the vacation fund. 
 
•    Lastly, we both know where to find our financial information. It’s in the bright green binder on my desk. If my hubby needs to know how much money is available for his hair cut, he can check and see if it’s there. If I need to see where we’re at with the grocery budget for that month, I just pull out the binder and see how much I have left to spend.

Thanks to Toni for posting this great project and providing motivation to get our finances in order! She also has her entire budget system available for sale for $10 which includes 15 beautiful PDF printable worksheets to create your own budget binder.


What do you do to keep your budget on track?