winging it.

I’m really lazy, so I use the jar method (they article calls it cash stuffing or the envelope method). But I use multiple accounts and automated transfers.

Basically: I have one account for personal spending, one for bills, one for insurance, one for groceries, one for vacation money, etc. I get paid regularly, so I have automated transfers move money into the appropriate accounts.

When it comes time to make an expense in the given category (e.g. insurance), I pay it out of the appropriate account.

The benefits

1. I don’t need to think about it after it’s set.

2. If I overspend in a category, it doesn’t reduce cash available in other categories.

3. It’s easy to tell if my budget is wrong: ie, if an account is building up cash, or doesn’t have enough money, it’s time to revisit the budget.

The first item is the most important to me. I’m not consistent enough to manage a spreadsheet.

I haven’t been following any specific method, just a budgeting spreadsheet that has evolved over time - though my own method works out similar to the “Pay yourself first” method mentioned in that link. Basically a spreadsheet with columns for each month & the rows document required expenses/bills, then savings goals, then slightly less-required expenses & discretionary spending. Some people do similar using “buckets” of spending goals & that works too.

Been doing it for a while so at this point already know my expected monthly/yearly costs & even have a year out projection of where the savings goals will land at the end of 2024. Of course keep in mind life happens, no amount of budgeting will get you out of surprises. It’s always best to have emergency savings.

For what it’s worth spending flowchart from the Personal Finance communities helps out a ton when planning things out e.g. https://lemmy.ml/post/1161162 from !personalfinance@lemmy.ml

EDIT: Speaking of the other communities you may want to visit !personalfinance@lemmy.ml / !personalfinance@lemmy.world while you’re on this topic :)

I follow an unconventional method that I came up with myself: any time I spend money on anything “unnecessary” (so, excluding things like rent, groceries, etc), I put an equal amount into my savings account.

Pros include: This method alleviates my guilt of spending money on myself. It scales, so the more money I make, the more I tend to save. It’s flexible enough that even during the times where I can’t afford to save, I can still stick to it.

I don’t really budget, I live alone, and make enough money to support myself and live a decent life.

But I do have a few rules:

1. I will never set up any kind of subscription, be it media (HBO, Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal), apps (Flightradar24, Vesselfinder), games (Geoguessr). What I will do is buy prepaid cards with credit for those services, and activate them for a set period of time, but I will never buy into a recurring charge for a service, I have seen too many people ruining their economy with subscriptions being a big contributer.

2. I seldom give into impulse buying expensive stuff, but if I have the money and can afford it I am not against buying quallity even if it more expensive at first.

3. I don’t accept a seller or sales system stressing me out to buy as fast as possible, I can and have just walked away when I felt uncomfortable with how fast the sale if being pushed, I want to have time to think about if this thing is worth it for that price and if I need it now before I buy it.

I always found it easier to basically automate the process as much as possible. “spend” every recurring expenditure and also set aside the most aggressive savings/investments possible using separate bill pay and savings accounts or buckets. Everything is taken out of the main account as soon as your paycheck hits, so it means everything you see on your spending account is a free dollar that you can use for fun or food.

Some people might operate better with a set amount for groceries too, but I personally found that too restrictive.

A good budget is one that you stick to, helps you achieve your goals, and crucially, allows you to enjoy your life to at least some extent. Whatever method works for you, it’s important to give yourself permission to spend some money on fun. However small.

At the very basic level, I predict how much money i expect to make in a month. Then subtract all bills and expenses that will definitely occur in the month. The difference is what i have to play with. Most times that extra goes into getting more groceries. Sometimes I can put that extra into my emergency savings which gets drained out more often than i’d like.

Ultimately, the best approach is the one that works best psychologically for you.

As long as you’re quantatively tracking the in/out of your dollars, yoiu’re doing it right.

From there, if your goal is to save money, its about rewiring your brain to gain pleasure from things other than consumption. In my life experience I’ve found the most sustainable way to feel good without spending money is through personal improvement and achievement. Skills, athletics, creativity, doesn’t matter. If you’re regularly getting better at making or doing stuff you’re proud of, you’ll feel good for free or cheap.

Husband has irregular income. Like you I do a spreadsheet with the dollars all allocated for my income plus what he tells me he expects on average.

Then each month I compare to actual results, and use that information to get a better estimate for the next year.

The black hole is credit card repayment because it was spent on something but goes in as debt repayment but we are working on that.

ETA: also do forecasting bank balance by day in months when things are tight. We do have savings but most of it in retirement accounts.

I mostly use the envelope method. My parents used literal envelopes when I was growing up, and somewhat early in my adulthood and in my career I came upon the online bank Simple. That bank changed the way I look at finances and saving money. So I still do it the way they taught me to do it.

I now use a bank called Monzo, and they are working toward building in a very similar budgeting method to Simple, with “Pots” instead of envelopes, that automatically get filled with money every paycheck.

We pay bills, rent, get food (all generic and heavy sales) then the money is gone. Its a good month if we have 20$ at the end of the month, thats how we budget, by having no money. Donated a decent amount to medical aid for Ukraine and ate plain rice most of that month, priorities

just a spreadsheet, every paycheck gets a row. I write in how much to savings, spending, etc. then how much I spent of last paycheck. make sure everything lines up with what bank acct is at. works pretty okay for me

I started with zero-based budgeting via YNAB ages ago when ynab was a local-only app. Over time though I’ve adjusted and focus on tracking my expenses rather than budgeting. I’ve found that for me, budgeting is hard to stick to because I can never predict well enough. Ynab helped back when I used it but even then I always had a “rollover” fund I had to steal from almost arbitrarily to make things balanced.

I do keep a rough spreadsheet budget of my fixed expenses though (rent, internet, phone, electricity, etc) that I use to understand how much of my money is “locked-in” and what is discretionary.

For tracking, I have a spreadsheet I input all my expenses into every month or two that I use to see how Ive been spending my money, and I use that to decide if I’m happy with where I am.

I don’t really budget. If I notice my credit card amount seems super high, I chill out on spending for a while.

At the start of 2023 there wasn’t one for me. I was in a rut and generally felt that if I didn’t spend the money on myself, my SO would. About 6 months later I had one entire paycheck vanish midway through the week from excessive takeout purchases (150+ daily) and quickly set a budget. We each get about 200 a week for ‘allowance’ to do with as we please, about another 200 for food for both of us, and the rest was going into aavings/toward bills, but then in November I realized just how little the principle on the credit card we haven’t used in two years was being paid with auto-pay and diverted the savings money towards that.

Currently, I’ve knocked down the CC by a third, plan to get it under control by march of work keeps up, then going back into savings and continuing with the basic plan.