Do you think my budget idea will work?

[samanthasmom]

i just went back to work after my 2nd dd and took a 300/week paycut. we never have followed a budget before and have always have had problems staying ahead of things. that just barely treading water feeling. i went thru all our bills and came up with 4375/month or 1100/week. so i was thinking if we put aside 1100/week then we should have money to pay our bills. it includes 50 every week to save. so save 200 a month in another account. whatever is left over is what we have for the week for gas, food, diapers, clothes. do you think this will work?

[confustication]

My mind absolutely boggles at that much in bills on a regular basis. I'm assuming you live in a fairly high COL area.

I think I'd pare down the amount going out as much as possible, and try to save a little more, $50 is a very small percent of your weekly income.

[samanthasmom]

i lve just outside of boston, so a very high col. my take home is about 700/week nd my dh take home is anywhere from 600-800.

we have cut down to the basics and saving 50 a week is to start with. we just paid nov mortgage on the 27th so we need to catch up.

[enfpintj]

I think you still have to budget for gas, food, diapers, etc...It's easy to overspend in food, for example, and then have nothing left for the other categories. try to track what you spend for a month or two and then be realistic about your budget for these groups.

[xekomaya]

It only works if you're completely totally positive you took into account every bill - including the less frequent ones like insurance payments, and then you're very careful with your food/clothing spending.

I just don't have the constitution to budget that way and really need to be specific about food and clothing and the like. Plus, if you spend all but 50$/week, you won't be able to go on vacation or replace big items.

[EviesMom]

I've done a modified version of this before and it worked well. We paid the regular, less-variable monthly bills--mortgage, electric, phone--on automatic payment. Putting the gas/electric on level billing plans helped too, so we didn't have diff seasonal bills.

Then we transferred $ to savings--long term and short term. We still use long term savings for retirement, etc.; now have medium term for vacations, etc; and short term for clothes, christmas, bdays.

Last, we took out the amount left to spend on sitter, food, transportation, etc. in cash. When we had money left at the end of the week, we "splurged" with half and put half into savings. There was not generally a lot left, but it kept us in better check about what we were really spending. You do have to think about things like "if we go out to eat, will we still have grocery money 3 days from now?" but if you have a decent pantry, it works out, you can decide to go out tonight and eat pasta and veggie dogs tomorrow night.

[SeekingJoy]

*bump*

OP, how did your budget work out?