Budgeting! Argghh!

Ok I've been sitting on my sofa with my lap top, phone and tablet to go through our expenses and budget. Yes, I need all 3 devices, well I probably don't but it makes life a little easier because I look at different things I need on each device rather then flicking back and forth on different tabs.

Any hoo, my brain feels like it is going to explode.

I have gone through all our monthly expenses and updated my expenses/budget table on Evernote, (I will be telling you all about my LOVE for Evernote and how fabulously useful it can be soon, I'm always discovering new ways to use it). I know how much money we have coming in and how much is going out regularly  BUT I am no wiser as to our budget and how much money we really have.

I cannot tell you how many budgets I have done, but I can tell you none of them have worked.

It's because apart from bills going out which I can keep track of it's all the other bits and bobs like diesel, coffee etc that I can't keep track of!

How do you do it? How do you keep track of your money? If you manage it well, please explain all, I NEED to know.

Now there are a ton of cute but helpful budgeting printables out there, but I don't think this will work for us. I've often seen stuff on the web and Pinterest on the envelope budgeting system, the name Dave Ramsey pops up quite a bit.

Over the years life has changed a lot. I'm sure I'm not the only person that frequently finds the coin/wallet section of my purse empty. Now yes, this is partly because I never seem to have any but what I'm getting at is I use my debit card the majority of the time and so does Hubby, This makes it so hard to keep track of daily expenses. Which is where the envelope system comes in. It doesn't help that it's difficult to budget for Hubby's diesel as he averages about 2000 miles a month, which is a lot of diesel. He drives all round the country but it's very random. He does get a fuel allowance which means in the middle of the month he will get money back but it's having the money for that outlay initially.

So with the envelope system, you work out what your outgoings are, work out catergoreies for your expenditures i.e food, medical, diesel etc, make up envelopes/pouches for each of the expenses and then physically get the cash out and put it into the relevant envelopes so you know how much you have to spend on each one. You are suppose to be very strict and should only use the money in the envelope for what it has been budgeted for.

I've been wondering if this is an easier way to keep track of where you money is going?

So after a bit of research, a few more hours spent on Pinterest (as if I don't spend enough time on there already) I've run the idea by Hubby and he is up for giving it a go, so we're going to trial the envelope system.

We're not doing it quite as you should as it's awkward with Hubby's expenses because as I mentioned we never quite sure how much diesel he will need.  Once we get into it more, this may be easier but one step at a time. It's important to do what works for you isn't it.

I have found a cute little expanding wallet to use which has 3 dividers in it, so one is going to be for food (this will include toiletries etc), one for my diesel and one for my personal expenses. We are going to need more categories but this month is really tight and we are restricted to what funds we have available so 3 categories are sufficient for this month.

 All the bills go out of my account, so I have worked out how much we have after the bills have gone out and then allocated a budget for each expenditure we have. As I said it's difficult to work out Hubby's expenses so we have allocated money which is in his account as normal and he will still be using his debit card for his purchases, so I suppose Hubby's account will be his envelope. At the end of the month we will have a better idea (hopefully) of where the money is going and it will help for the following months budgeting.

Check out my Pinterest board and you will find links to some detailed posts about the cash envelope system along with how to set it up and making your own cash envelopes.
finances board on Pinterest.

Click on the link to check out Victoria's from Happily ever Straders blog it's a detailed run down of using the cash envelope system and another great post is this one from Just sweet and simple, there are some cute printables to use too.

I'm hoping the system is going to help us with our budgeting, it has so many positive reviews.

Now all that's left is we bump into a helpful money fairy who magics us some more money...

You can catch me at these parties!