How to Create a Budget

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > How to Create a Budget

H110Hawk: Dec 28, 2006

How are people handling annual expenses? In general they aren't that bad, but I'm trying to optimize my ~~budget~~ retrospective spreadsheet slightly further now that there are more than just a few $100 subs here and there. Do you make a ledger of all of them then amortize it out into a line item of "annual expenses"? We run a monthly surplus which covers this stuff, with excess swept into the general savings account periodically. There are other things in here I am probably forgetting.

For example:
Life Insurance Me - $684
Life Insurance Spouse - $304
Earthquake Insurance - $666 ( :black101:

)
Personal Articles Policy - $120
TiVo - $150
Charity - $720
Trash/Sewer/etc - $365
Amazon Prime - $99
= $3,108 / 12 = $259/month?

# ¿ May 30, 2017 22:47

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 05:47

H110Hawk: Dec 28, 2006

PhantomOfTheCopier posted:

Per category, of course. Renter's insurance, save a bit each month and identify it as such. Just as you shouldn't steal food money for toys, so also should you not steal insurance monies for bling.

Of course, every category also has its own extra to get six months ahead, and some even have 2% inflation savings.

I have a five year license renewal that I save for monthly. $1.

Ashcans posted:

Yea, most annual or similar things I just break out over the year, so my budget has a line-item for Amazon Prime that accrues every month and is paid once a year. Granted that this can get a little dumb, especially if the annual amount is so small it vanishes in any meaningful budget. If you are consistently earning more than you budget, you can also simply put this in as a single item on the given month it comes up - so for instance, if you usually end up with some amount of money over your budget items, you can just tally 'Amazon Prime' for that month and reduce your overage that month (or if you are budgeting your complete earnings, reduce your contributions to a more flexible item). I think what exactly you do is sort of up to how you feel works best for you, as long as your answer isn't just 'ignore it and then fall out of budget regularly when these things come due'.

Thanks, I wanted to check this was a sane approach. Given we currently don't have a budget just a cashflow spreadsheet which shows if we're spending more than we make (which includes lines for savings and all that) I won't be doing $1 accruals. I just want to get it a little closer to "true" so the monthly mystery expenses are fewer and further between. I think I will break it into two lines, necessary (insurance x 4, sewer/trash, TiVo :colbert:

, crashplan ) and nice to have (charity, Amazon Prime, etc.)

One day we will get to a budget.

# ¿ May 31, 2017 04:30

H110Hawk: Dec 28, 2006

Magnetic North posted:

I am creating a serious budget for the first time in ages. I don't know if I want to talk about the specific numbers on the web, and besides many of the numbers are cruel, high estimates meant to frighten me. Still, I was hoping to get another pair of eyes to make sure I hadn't missed anything glaringly obvious. These are the items I have listed:

401k
Car Insurance
City Taxes (For whatever reason, it seems like state and fed are folded into mortgage when people do these budgets for some reason? At least, from my googling. I guess that might be because it's fairly constant and directly affects how much home you can get, while the city taxes are variable.)
Electricity
Entertainment (aka mostly eating out with friends because I am the worst)
Gasoline
Groceries
Heating Oil
Natural Gas (not honestly sure if I should have both gas and oil? I guess I thought that was correct when I made this a few days ago)
Internet
Phone
Sewer
Student Loans
Water
Work Lunches (because did I mention I am the worst)
Misc Savings (put this down as 10%, also probably dreaming).

Things I know I am not forgetting:
Mortgage / Rent Payment (this whole exercise it to find out what housing I can afford)
Car Payment (I own my car)
Credit Card Debt (I use it but pay it each month, so I am carrying no month-over-month credit card debt. Maybe I should add the monthly hit from the APR? I don't know if it applies if you pay in full. That seems like a fact worth knowing.)
Pet food (no pets)

What am I forgetting?

Annual expenses. Do you have AAA? Life insurance? Car registration?

I also found it useful to open a 3-month window on my use-for-everything credit card and spot check my values. Then for my "everything else" line I have my average monthly balance, I subtract out the budgeted things which I pay for on that card (groceries for example.) This leaves me with a number that is out of budget money.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2017 00:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > How to Create a Budget