this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Does anyone have specific ways to budget? Whether this is using apps or specific spreadsheets? Budgeting is hard, and especially with ADHD I'm like "ooo money" and I've gotten into some serious trouble from spending money and forgetting about the responsibilities I have. There's the 50/30/20 rule which seems pretty doable. I might change my health insurance to be paid monthly instead of the fortnight it was originally set due to being paid fortnightly (this new job will pay me out monthly instead).
I just wrote a long reply and the internet ate it. ☹️
Shorter repost version - I use a system with multiple bank accounts, like the jars system them article Electronic_Owl posted talks about.
The bit that tends not to get mentioned with budgets that tripped me up for ages is that you need a system/plan for what to do when your estimates are wrong - for example what do you do if after putting aside money for you electricity bill it turns out to be $20 short?
I recommend having a jar/envelope/account specifically for that situation, with a set amount of money. If you need to use it repay the money before adding to savings (like an emergency fund, but for small budget errors not big disasters). That gives you the ability to deal with the discrepancy without to much stress, then you fix the budget problem for the future.
Oh... that's actually a really good idea about the emergency estimates. I'm bad at maths, so no doubt my numbers will eventually get wrong.
Even if you are really good at maths you'll get things wrong. Budgets are based on our best guess for the future, we will never get it exactly right. For some reason the budgeting stuff I read never seems to cover what to do when that happens, but it's the main issue that derailed my budgeting for years.
Oh true true. I mean yeah it seems like all these blog posts make it out that you need to be perfect... Oh well. Thanks for the advice!
This article is basic and useful, but it's a bit out of date because the mvelopes.com site no longer exists.
Thank you!