Yeah, before we have people pointing out the obvious...Im not one to be giving money advice or even budgeting advice. But advice when you think about it, is a tool. Most often, advice is a tool that is gained from previous situations. I like to say that I fail, but I succeed at finding out what doesnt work. Advice given is something that others found to be helpful and offered as a tool so that others may be helped. And stuff.
Anywho...Calculators. Sounds easy...actually sounds dumb. A calculator should be used in creating a budget, obvioulsy...but it should be used in many ways.
My first budget was a spreadsheet on excel. I dont even know why I called it a budget as all it did was show where our bills and debts where. I had information on: the debts name, how much we owe, any interest, any daily interest, last update, what i paid, minimum payment due...etc. I had it set up also to create a pie chart so I could see how our money was being spent. Not a bad start, but in the end, all I was doing was basically recording information on our debt, not making a plan to get out of it.
The second budget I created...I dont even think I referred to it as a budget but I wrote down our bills as we got them in the mail...then paid them off as we had money, cross it off from the list...etc.
however, over the past few months, I've found the best solution to be Planning where to spend the money...giving each dollar a job, and making sure that each one is used for either bills, basic stuff, but mostly on getting out of debt, although it can be used for other things after one is out of debt.
What I do is I print a free calendar from Printfree.com and write down our paydays and what we will get paid. I get paid every Friday and Marcie, on the 15th and 30th. So With that in mind....I start crunching numbers with the calculator. What I do is write down what we got paid. Meaning if I got paid $1,000...Id write that in the date box. With that, I know that I have 1000 to spend. I go and write down our pay amounts for each of our pay days. From there, I start spreading the bills out. There are some bills like rent, mortgage, lot rent, credit card agreements, insurance, automatic payments...etc, where I know the exact date the payment is going to process; and I jot them down on our pay day. Second, I go and write down our weekly items such as 100 for groceries, 30 for fuel for one of the cars, partial bike payment...etc.
Then I start getting more detailed as I write down the rest of the bills such as utilities, phone bills, cable...etc. I fill them in throughout the month when I have money left over. I also do it so that Im not late with the bills, outside of our mortgage.
When Im finished with the week, I add up what we will spend moneywise that week...and then if there is anything left over, I can start planning on how to use it. For example...lets use the 1k figure. If I got paid 1 grand on Fridays, and then after all the number crunching for the month was over...I had 850 in bills and money spent that week...Id have 150 left over. I basically wait until the next friday and any leftover money, I use to pay down a debt even more.
The calculator is just a tool to use to see how you are doing as the week progresses. You can compare the money in the bank to the bills you are paying that week. You can see if you will have extra, if you are going to be tight...or if you messed up and are going to overdraft. This last week, I ran the numbers and felt we had some extra spending money so I sent off a check to pay down our furniture. The same thing happened the week before last and I sent off 300 bucks. All together, we have paid down that particular bill 400 bucks just in the past three weeks alone, just by giving each dollar a job.
As each bill is paid, i cross it off so I know what is still waiting to process. For the ease of budgeting and such, I pay most of our bills online via bill pay or the companies websites.
I just ran the numbers this morning and if everything plays out how i think it will, we will have one extra dollar in the bank, lol. However, I know that is also a false showing as well because of the fact that I budged 40 bucks for dinner and a movie which is most likely overshooting it since we are going to matinees so we will have extra for that. Plus, we dont spend 100 bucks a week on groceries, so there will be leftover from that as well. And on top of that, we transfer 75 bucks a month over to our money market account automatically so I can transfer that back with no penalties.
In the end, by using the calculator and crunching numbers, and giving each dollar a job or bill to pay...we have paid off 7 debts in the past few months and payed down 1/3 of our furniture in 3 weeks.