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My husband and I have recently gotten into a groove of budgeting together (only took us 7 years) and I wanted to share some helpful things we’ve been using and doing to keep us on the same page.
First, I want to preface this with saying, we’re by no means professionals in budgeting, in fact, we’ve tried SO MANY different things in the past, and we’ve finally landed on something that works for us, and I wanted to share that here with all of my readers! (I’d also like to share with you my favorite simplified finance book here).
I’m a planner user (here’s my blog post on my whole system), my husband is not. In fact, he doesn’t use his phone calendar or our shared dry erase board calendar. Yet, somehow he is the one always reminding me that we have activities planned (not quite sure how that works). In the past I have tried writing our bills on our shared dry erase board calendar (it seemed tacky to have that info available to everyone walking into my kitchen), using different budgeting apps (I’m a pen and paper person through and through) and sending him weekly texts of what was due and how much we were budgeting for everything (he never actually read them and it was quite a bit to type out and remember to send each week).
I’ve finally figured out what works for me – and that’s simply adding each of my bills and expenses when they’re due on the MONTH portion of the calendar in my planner. From there, I will write one of my “top three” things for the day on payday is to budget. To remind me to flip back to the month section and pay the bills for that coming week. We have a standing grocery budget of $100-150 a week for groceries and $50 a week for gas. From there, we will discuss savings, donations, family fun days, and how much we have to spend for things like that, since our bills fluctuate each week.
Here’s where my husband comes in, well not really, he’s actually very passive in all of this, because it just makes sense. He works 40-80 hours a week every week and he simply doesn’t have the mental capacity to budget. I also went to school for business and I just understand these things better. However, I know that wouldn’t work for most families, but for ours it does. Anyways, he requested that I make him his own calendar and simplified budget sheet for him each month, to hang by his bedside table, that’s it. He just wants to be able to see the calendar, somewhere he frequently thinks, reads, relaxes – his side of the bed. This works out for me, because at the end of each month I do my planning for the FOLLOWING month. For example, if it’s January 29, I will start doing all of my calendars and planning for February. And honestly, since I’ve been doing this for a while now, it really doesn’t take that much time. Each sunday I already always sit down and plan my week (dinners, activities, bills, etc.), but the Sunday before a new month I’m doing planning for the week AND for the month. And it only requires maybe 30 more minutes, if that.
Here’s the point of my blog post – find what works for you when it comes to budgeting. You don’t have to over complicate it, you just have to decide where your money is going. That can be daily, weekly, monthly, bimonthly – whatever works for you!
I also wanted to share these budgeting printables I made, to post next to my husband’s bedside table. In the future I would love to start making my own agenda books and adding the monthly plan/monthly budget behind my monthly calendar. But for now, I just glue it behind the calendar after I’m done with those days in my planner, before I’m done with them I just paperclip them to the month pages.
I hope that was helpful, and simplified, for a very (seemingly) complicated topic. If you have any questions or remarks or ideas feel free to post them below! Thanks for reading!