Okay, I have a question for you savvy budgeting folks!
I am using a preprinted Home/Office Budget book from Adams publications to track our spending and come up with a budget. The book itself is about 6x15 or so, and it's organized like a ledger or a spreadsheet, with days of the month along the top horizontally and expense categories in a column along the left side. The categories are predetermined, and are the most common household items--housing, insurance, utilities, loans, credit cards, groceries, transportation, child care, medical/prescriptions, dining out, clothing, etc. There are a total of 30 categories, including a miscellaneous category, and then there spaces for you to write in categories. I have written in the categories of "Dogs", "Home Maintenance" and "Personal Care". Overall I'm pretty happy with this system thus far. One of the problems I have had with budgeting in the past is that I can be a little bit, uh, shall we say, perfectionistic, and can get bogged down in the details.
Anyway, though, this is giving me a better idea of how much we spend on the major categories--utilities, cell phone and phone/internet, groceries, eating out, etc. I'm still trying to track pretty decently so that I actually know where our money is going and can thus set more realistic numbers and also target where we need to cut spending and/or increase income. Right now it's more "descriptive" still rather than completely "prescriptive" as I just started this in September so I wanted to get a really good idea of how much our expenses actually are before I set a target/limit for how much we "should" be spending in different categories.
So, my question however is about tracking purchases that fit into a number of different categories, but are purchased on one receipt. Do you actually break that total down into the component parts and separate them out into different categories, or lump the total into "miscellaneous"? For example: I went to Walgreens. I bought two children's toothbrushes for DD for $4.00. I bought a children's toothpaste for $3.99. I bought a humongous bottle of ibuprofen for 19.99. I bought some burt's bees intensive hand repair cream for 11.99. I bought some soda for 1.79. Total bill was 45.33. (Please don't comment on the actual spending choices here--this is just an example, as I am only asking about how to *classify* these purchases for the sake of keeping track of spending, not whether these purchases were adequately frugal or sensible!!
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) Would you put the toothbrushes/toothpaste/hand cream totalled in "personal care" and the ibuprofen in "medical/drugs" and the soda in "miscellaneous"? Or would you just put the whole total bill as a miscellaneous expense? Similar question about Target: We bought some cleaning supplies. We bought some hand soap. We bought some pens. We bought some food/grocery items. Would you break these down into those categories or not? Same question with things like personal care items or cleaning supplies that you purchase at the grocery store--do you consider those part of your grocery bill, or do you categorize them separately?
I guess the question is: How specific do you get with budgeting for these sorts of items? How specific are you with categories, and with breaking down purchases into categories? Do you have a place to seperately list the items that are "miscellaneous" so you know exactly what you spent that on months from now when you no longer remember? Or--does it even matter and should I just set a limit for each category and do cash envelopes for that category and then not even pay attention to what I spend the $ on as long as it's within the budget amount? Is that realistic in the long run when you are fairly new to doing an actual budget and tracking spending by categories? I just know that in the past I have tended to overlook certain things as necessities--for instance, needing a new toothbrush now and then, or the fact that the insurance bill comes quarterly, etc.!! I want to get a good handle on what exactly our expenses over a typical year, so I want to be specific enough but I don't want to be too obsessive/compulsive and nitpicky either.
Thanks!
I am using a preprinted Home/Office Budget book from Adams publications to track our spending and come up with a budget. The book itself is about 6x15 or so, and it's organized like a ledger or a spreadsheet, with days of the month along the top horizontally and expense categories in a column along the left side. The categories are predetermined, and are the most common household items--housing, insurance, utilities, loans, credit cards, groceries, transportation, child care, medical/prescriptions, dining out, clothing, etc. There are a total of 30 categories, including a miscellaneous category, and then there spaces for you to write in categories. I have written in the categories of "Dogs", "Home Maintenance" and "Personal Care". Overall I'm pretty happy with this system thus far. One of the problems I have had with budgeting in the past is that I can be a little bit, uh, shall we say, perfectionistic, and can get bogged down in the details.
Anyway, though, this is giving me a better idea of how much we spend on the major categories--utilities, cell phone and phone/internet, groceries, eating out, etc. I'm still trying to track pretty decently so that I actually know where our money is going and can thus set more realistic numbers and also target where we need to cut spending and/or increase income. Right now it's more "descriptive" still rather than completely "prescriptive" as I just started this in September so I wanted to get a really good idea of how much our expenses actually are before I set a target/limit for how much we "should" be spending in different categories.
So, my question however is about tracking purchases that fit into a number of different categories, but are purchased on one receipt. Do you actually break that total down into the component parts and separate them out into different categories, or lump the total into "miscellaneous"? For example: I went to Walgreens. I bought two children's toothbrushes for DD for $4.00. I bought a children's toothpaste for $3.99. I bought a humongous bottle of ibuprofen for 19.99. I bought some burt's bees intensive hand repair cream for 11.99. I bought some soda for 1.79. Total bill was 45.33. (Please don't comment on the actual spending choices here--this is just an example, as I am only asking about how to *classify* these purchases for the sake of keeping track of spending, not whether these purchases were adequately frugal or sensible!!
I guess the question is: How specific do you get with budgeting for these sorts of items? How specific are you with categories, and with breaking down purchases into categories? Do you have a place to seperately list the items that are "miscellaneous" so you know exactly what you spent that on months from now when you no longer remember? Or--does it even matter and should I just set a limit for each category and do cash envelopes for that category and then not even pay attention to what I spend the $ on as long as it's within the budget amount? Is that realistic in the long run when you are fairly new to doing an actual budget and tracking spending by categories? I just know that in the past I have tended to overlook certain things as necessities--for instance, needing a new toothbrush now and then, or the fact that the insurance bill comes quarterly, etc.!! I want to get a good handle on what exactly our expenses over a typical year, so I want to be specific enough but I don't want to be too obsessive/compulsive and nitpicky either.
Thanks!
