Homemaking Series: Budgeting and Personal Finance

Hello everyone and welcome back to the blog! Today we will be discussing money and budgeting. I know that this can be a sensitive topic for some to share about, but since I don’t have anything that’s not exactly public information, I decided that I will share this information.

I thought that I’d start off this post with my personal finance story, where I’m at, and my goals. So, I’m only 19 years old and I’m about to get married. I have around $2,000 in credit card debt as well as $10,000 in student loan debt. I’m working 20-24 hours a week at a minimum wage job (which in Colorado is $12.38 per hour). Hopefully, I’m going to get another job as a pharmacy technician, but that will be an update for a later time.

My financial goals include saving $100,000 for general emergency funds, saving $10,000+ for a wedding (I don’t have a specific budget yet. I’ll update you more in a wedding planning post/series), and saving some money for a down payment on a house (again, I don’t know specific numbers).

So, how am I going to reach all of these goals? Well, I’m budgeting. I’ve been following a lot of YouTube channels that have to do with budgeting and personal finance. From watching these channels, I’ve been able to develop a system for me to be able to allocate my money in a way that is beneficial for my personal finance journey.

Here is my system for budgeting. I have four different time frames for when I do my personal finances. The system is broken down into monthly, biweekly, weekly, and daily tasks.

Monthly

My monthly routine involves printing out my budget worksheet (which I might sell if there’s a demand for it), tracking my credit card debt, and filling out my budget worksheet.

I have a monthly budgeting worksheet that is on my computer and has all of my personal monthly bills written down on it.

The day that I receive my first paycheck of the month, I will print out the worksheet and start by filling in the income of that paycheck as well as estimating my paychecks for the rest of the month. Then, I will fill out the amount of my monthly bills, which include the minimum payments for my credit cards. At the end of every section, I subtract my expense total from my income amount, so that I can eventually zero out my budget.

After working through my required payments, I allocate $120 to extra debt payments and separate the money by week. I use the debt snowball method to pay off my debts in the most efficient way possible.

After I subtract how much I have left to budget, I’ll start allocating money to my spending envelops. I have three envelops that I spend out of: beauty, clothing, and fun. Each envelope has a specific amount that they receive each month. My beauty envelope gets $20, clothes gets $40, and fun gets $15, totaling to $75 a month.

Once I subtract from my spending section, I start on my sinking funds. I have 6 sinking fund envelopes that each get a specific amount of money every month. I will not be disclosing the amount of money each envelope gets every month just because this blog post is getting extremely long, however, I will be posting cash stuffing videos on my YouTube channel. The total of my sinking funds usually amount to around $230 a month.

Once I finish allocating my money, any unbudgeted income goes into my investment account.

Now that I’ve finished planning where my money is going, I track how much debt that I’ve paid off on a debt tracking graph. This graph only includes my credit card debt and once I get all of that paid off, I will start a new debt tracking graph for my student loans.

Bi-weekly

Alright, my monthly routine is definitely the most time consuming, but now we’ll move onto what I do bi-weekly. I get paid on a bi-weekly basis which is why I have a bi-weekly routine. Once I notice the deposit in my bank account, I will go to an ATM and withdraw the correct amount of money to get my through the next two weeks. When I get home from the bank, I stuff my cash envelopes with the correct denominations.

Weekly

My weekly routine is probably the most simple out of all four routines. All I do is I look at my extra debt payments budget and pay off the amount allotted for the specific account.

Daily

My daily routine includes looking at my bank account to see which automatic payments have gone in and out and I’ll track that on my budget sheet as well as in a spreadsheet. I’ll also look at any receipts from any purchases that I have made that day.

And there you have it! That’s my personal finance goals and routines. I hope that you found something useful or inspiring from this post.

xoxo Meghan