How to Create a Budget

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

moana: Jun 18, 2005; one of the more intellectual satire communities on the web

skipdogg posted:

I call it the 10% 'Misc' category. 10% of your take home income should be thrown into a miscellaneous category. My Miscellaneous category is designed to cover unscheduled expenditures that don't make sense to budget for. Hair cuts, new clothes auto maintenance, household expenses, doctor copays, fun money, whatever.

Budgeting for these expenses can also get tedious. Do you really want to waste time figuring out you have to save exactly $43.23 cents a month to afford a new set of tires in 2 years?

I do this too, since I don't really give a poo poo about budgeting out for clothes shopping and haircuts and other things that only happen a few times a year. I track my major categories and fixed expenses, but all the rest gets thrown under misc. I've found that saving around 5-10% a month into my checking account works fine to keep a pad of a few thousand dollars, if that gets too high I transfer money from checking to savings.

bam thwok posted:

This might work well for you, but it's generally pretty bad advice. No, you can't budget for everything, but auto maintenance, hair cuts, and shopping for clothes? You absolutely can, and should budget for those, even if they aren't neat, monthly repeating amounts. This is the type of thing that isn't a problem until the moment that it is.

I know you can, but why should you? I guess I don't see how it would ever be a problem if you have a reasonable pad in your checking account. If major auto repairs come up, that's why you have an emergency fund. A lot of the other stuff is stuff that can be put off (if I ever lost my job, I wouldn't be out clothes shopping) or eliminated completely. A line-item budget makes sense if you're living paycheck to paycheck or if you have terrible spending issues, but for people whose checking buffer is measured in the thousands, tracking a bunch of small expenses each month seems like more hassle than it's worth.

# ¿ May 14, 2013 22:30

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 21:18

moana: Jun 18, 2005; one of the more intellectual satire communities on the web

I don't spend more than a few minutes every week checking mint. Sometimes things get misclassified (my "Loan depot" mortgage payment used to get shoved under "home improvement") but it's easy to fix. I'd say mint is good if all of your banks are accepted there, but YNAB is more robust.

# ¿ May 15, 2013 14:57

moana: Jun 18, 2005; one of the more intellectual satire communities on the web

I've had a really lovely time trying to combine finances on Mint - specifically, having two Vanguard accounts for my husband and me. It always remarks them as duplicate accounts and then marks them as closed, and I've emailed twice to try and get it fixed, but they can't do much it seems.

# ¿ May 22, 2016 20:50

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