money and budgeting

For 7 months now (since March) I have been tracking my expenditures obsessively. I have a system - I keep receipts for about a week, then sit down with my bank acct. webpage open, and my ledger in front of me, and I write down the ammounts and the balances. Then, I open up my handy spreadsheet that I got from Sparkpeople, and I then break down each receipt into categories. For example, I might spend $50.00 at Vons, but I write down if I spent it on snacks, drinks, fresh fruit, meat, spices, etc. I do this for a whole month, and then open up spreadsheet page #2, copy and paste the month's line items, and then sort by category. I then make it pretty so I can go down the list and see exactly how much I spent on what category. Then I open spreadsheet page #3, which is Months-Side-by-Side. This is so I can see trends over the months in my spending, by categories. I have a column where I find out the averages, and that's what I base my budget on. For example, if I end up spending 200 during December for gifts, but I don't spend any the rest of the time, then I am trying to spread out that 200 over a year, so I fit the average in my monthly budget.

My first few months it was a success for me to a) just track everything. It was not an easy habit to get into. After tracking, I was able to see that I was spending way more money than I wanted to on a few clear categories - eating out, for example. I think that first month I tracked I spent nealy $175.00 on eating out. The next month it was much easier to just be conscious of that, and I cut it down to about $70.00. Now I have a $30.00 limit for eating out each month,and I can usually stick inside of that.

This month I am now concerned with saving money - and that I can't seem to do that. So I have taken every one of my averaged categories, and made a whole new page where I figured out my ideal spending budget for each thing, I put that at the top of a chart, and as I spend, I can subtract to find out how much less I have for the month. Kind of the same idea as when I used to budget by putting actual cash in envelopes - that way if I ran out of one, I had to literally borrow from another. I was a very visual person. In any case, so now I have my list! I just have to stick with it. And hope that no emergency happens, because I don't really have an emergency contingency plan yet. Ack.

So my categories and budgeted amount per month are
Art Supplies: 15.00
Clothes: 40.00
Dinner Out: 20.00
Fitness: 5.00
For Adam: 25.00
Groceries: 300.00
Household: 60.00
Hygeine: 12.00
Lunch out: 30.00
Medical: 50.00
Pets: 40.00
Recreation: 30.00
Rent: 733.00
Savings: 300.00
Student Loan: 53.00
Vehicle: 290.00
Garden: 10.00
Gifts: 20.00
School: 40.00

I would so love to have a separate bank account for each category. But I suppose I'll just have to be smart enough to do it all on paper and keep track of it. This month I am doing pretty well - I blew 30 dollars extra on clothes at the beggining of the month, so I've had to borrow from some other categories, and I have to pay off my root canal - which I am able to do just a little at a time.

My other project is to sell things I make, of course. It was so much fun to do that at the Good Vibrations Conference, but now I need another publicity boost. ;)

Anyways, if you have a different way of budgeting, let me know. I am always trying to make my system better.

I'm just so very tired of being broke. I feel anxious without savings. I like having a plan.

I am incredibly tired tonight - just from a sheer lack of sleep. A coworker bought 2 scarves from me, which is amazing, wonderful, superb, yay! I also did the crochet portion of a new granny square bag. I have two others that I have to attach handles to and sew linings for. I'd really love to get to a fabric store and buy some zippers to try to make little coin purse wallet things.

I downloaded the etsy sellers spreadsheet, but it's not quite working for me. They have awfully elaborate excel formulas and I'm afraid to alter anything in case it affects something else. I might go old fashioned, and do it by hand. My aunt has one of my favorite family heirlooms - I want to say it was my great grandfather's - it's a giant ledger from his grocery store...and this tiny, fragile pencil spiderweb script for thousands of pages reads "eggs...mrs matherson... 25 cents. bread...mrs johans...15 cents.." etc. It's amazing. One day my great great grandkid is going to open up my archaic excel spreadsheet... hardeeharhar.

tomorrow I will delve deeply into the etsybloggers team site and figure out what I need to do to get more involved! I am having a hard time keeping track. I am like this at work lately, too. There are things I just think "okay, tomorrow" and put them off each day. No more ostriching! I am gonna do it!

But right now - I am going to fold some laundry, then get to bed!