this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
24 points (96.2% liked)

Personal Finance

3744 readers
3 users here now

Learn about budgeting, saving, getting out of debt, credit, investing, and retirement planning. Join our community, read the PF Wiki, and get on top of your finances!

Note: This community is not region centric, so if you are posting anything specific to a certain region, kindly specify that in the title (something like [USA], [EU], [AUS] etc.)

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
WandererLagomorph799@lemmy.ml
nieceandtows@programming.dev
nieceandtows@lemmy.ml
24
What is your favourite budgeting method? (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de to c/personalfinance@lemmy.ml
19 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

A Vanguard video (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1nprZjV_6FM) refers to 4 budgeting methods

  1. the envelope method
  2. the pay yourself first method
  3. 50/30/20 method
  4. zero based budget method

Which one is your favourite?

Edit: non-text version with a 5th method: https://www.lendingtree.com/student/simple-budget/

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

I largely do the same, but I also track expenses mostly to understand our spending, not control it. I use Tiller to dump our expenses into a spreadsheet and then assign them relevant categories. I then review spending trends and if something looks off, and my wife and I discuss options to optimize it.

For example, I noticed our restaurant spending was going up, so we set a goal to try cooking new foods and that helped. It didn't feel like we were sacrificing, just adjusting our lifestyle a bit to be more in line with our goals.