How We Budget

Unlike alot of people who budget monthly, we budget weekly.  Brian and my pay schedules are staggered so we get paid every week.  It's nice to constantly have something to look forward to at each week, but it makes it more difficult to plan out our payments and we never truly have a big chunk of money to pay bills with.  With that in mind, I revised my budget plan that I've been using since I was in college.

I have a notebook calendar of the year that shows the big monthly calendar.  On each month, I indicate what our pay days are with circles and add to the days, what payments are due.  Some payments are on the same day each month (ie. car payments, mortgage, school loan etc.) and some are when we get the bill (ie. utilities, garbage disposal, etc.)  I usually indicate on the right column for notes, what the variable costs are. That way, when I plan out our weeks, I do not forget that the utitlity bill should be due around the 2nd week of the month.

About once a month I take a look at our monthly plan and make an excel spreadsheet to figure out what bills will be paid during each payperiod.  My monthly calendar makes this a great visual to see what needs to paid by what day and with what paycheck.   I indicate each payperiod and mark what bills will need to paid during that payperiod.  I also automatically take out $100 to put towards debt each payperiod, on top of our normal minimum payment. This gives us an additional $400 a month to put towards our debt.  Sometimes, if we are tight on money during a week, this is where the overflow would come from and we might only pay $300 or $350 additional to debt that month.  I also started a new automatic savings, which I will share later.

Since we get paid weekly and not with one pay period, we do need to set money aside for our bigger payments, such as our mortgage.  If I know our mortgage is due by the 1st of the month, usually the previous 2 payperiod each have a large chuck of money set aside, so it's saved throughout 2 paychecks and not with 1.

Also, my excel spreadsheet, I have tabs that are listed for each month, overall debt and our goals. On our debt spreadsheet, I mark each month as what our balance was and what our payments were. Once a debt is paid, it's highlighted and marked off. I love seeing that! By March, I hope to see one more line highlighted and marked off!