Recently, we scoured over our budget, re-assigning categories and tweaking amounts, until little holes were fixed and the numbers ran smooth.
We use Mvelopes, created by Crown Financial Ministries, and our budget categories appear as envelopes to us on the screen, a virtual cash envelope system. It is a wonderful tool for visual people, for someone like me. I need to see it, broken down, and the virtual envelope method works quite well for me. My banking transactions are uploaded into Mvelopes, and all I do is simply drag each transaction to the appropriate envelope. I don’t need to enter anything, I just click and drag. And, the program does all the math for me. It’s about as easy – and convenient – as an online budgeting program can be. What I like even better is that it’s offered by Crown Financial Ministries; they had been an integral part of our purchasing our home cash nearly four years ago.
Whether you use Mvelopes or another program, an Excel spreadsheet, or plain old pencil and paper (we’ve done that, too!), I hope you will find this peek into our budget “envelopes” helpful.
Here are some category suggestions:
- Tithing/Giving
- Taxes
- Auto: Insurance
- Auto: Gas/Oil
- Auto: Maintenance/Repair
- Auto: Savings for Replacement
- Emergency Savings
- Savings/Investments
- Clothing
- Entertainment (ie, Netflix)
- Eating Out
- Groceries/Toiletries
- Insurance: Health
- Insurance: Life, etc
- Housing: Homeowner’s Insurance
- Housing: Property Taxes
- Housing: Internet
- Housing: Maintenance
- Housing: Electric/Gas
- Housing: Telephone
- Housing: Water/Sewer
- Christmas Savings
- Gifts
- Pet Care/Food
- Haircuts
- Vacations
Does your family use a written budget? Do you have additional envelopes or budget categories?
Warmly,
we have school(field trip fees, yearbooks, pictures, instrument repair, etc) and sports(reg fees, uniforms, equipment, etc)
unfortunately with one starting high school in the fall, I have to increase the amounts in those 2 categories and add a category to save for her duel credit classes(she can take college classes from our local colleges for a fraction of the cost!)
April, those are great ideas, and two that I need to add myself! Thank you 🙂
Great tips! Sounds a lot like Dave Ramsey.
Rachel, I’m a Ramsey fan, too… only I’m partial to Crown since we we’re blessed by them back when they were Christian Financial Concepts with Larry Burkett, well over ten years ago now. And I love that they share so many examples directly from the Bible 🙂 Dave Ramsey has wonderful materials, too, and is certainly inspirational! I’m glad you mentioned him.
Our budget categories are almost identical with a few additions: mortgage, doctor/prescriptions, blow money (yes, we’re Ramsey fans also), and a sinking fund for photos since we have two small children and pictures are a regular occurrence. I use actual envelopes to track many of the categories and it works pretty well as long as I keep up with it! 🙂
I tried using your link, but it doesn’t enter a referral code automatically. Furthermore, when I click submit, it gives me some error about not being able to offer me an upgrade or something?
Not sure what I’m doing wrong…
Scratch that…my browser, RockMelt, doesn’t seem to be compatible with their website. Firefox displayed it just fine.
Jaime, I also use Mvelopes and I love it! We have more or less the same envelopes, but one thing I noticed is that you don’t have one for auto registration. I recently created an envelope for that because I hate being hit with a bill like that and having to scramble to cover it by pulling funds from various other envelopes.
Like Jen said, we also each have an envelope of blow money. We still discuss our purchases, but that way I don’t freak out when he uses his money to buy Xbox Live points or an occasional lunch at work, and I’m free to save my money for a bigger purchase if I choose.
Good ideas! A few years ago we had “pocket money” envelopes which are probably similar to the “blow money” envelopes you mentioned. For some reason we stopped, but I may have to revisit it 😉
We each get blow money every paycheck (luckily, we both get paid every two weeks, but opposite each other. So we have a paycheck every week…which makes budgeting MUCH easier) When we each get a bonus, that person gets a little extra of their blow money. We do not discuss what we do with that money. We both really needed independence with this fund! If I want to get my nails done, I don’t have to explain myself…and if he wants the next gadget (Ipad2!) he has to save it from his blow money and I have no problem with that!
We have envelopes too (BIG Dave fans)! 🙂 We have similar categories for our budget. One category we also have that we use for those things like car insurance and taxes and registration is just an “Annual Expenses” category. We have a separate checking account that we transfer a specific amount of money into for each paycheck. I have a spreadsheet that lists all of the things (like what I mentioned above plus birthdays, vet visits, holidays, pest control, etc) that only come once or a few times a year. I have it totaled up and then divided by the number of paychecks. This tells me how much to transfer to that account. Then whenever one of those things comes up, I can just withdraw cash or pay it online from that account!!! 🙂 No surprises!
We also have an “Energy Overage” fund. We allocate a certain amount for our gas and electric bills (2 separate bills) for each month. The months that we are under (spring and fall) the budgeted amount we transfer the remaining into the “Energy Overage” fund. That way we have extra for the months we are over (winter and summer) and we aren’t caught off guard! 🙂
Just a few things we’ve learn that have helped.
I have never heard of the Mvelopes, and am very eager to check it out, thank you so much for sharing this!!!
We are also huge Dave Ramsey fans and have loved having an envelope system. We have recently changed our system so that it really works for us.
Instead of having a million categories after the stable bills are paid, we just have two: groceries and “other”. Our “other” category combines entertainment, school expenses, gifts, birthday parties, haircuts, eating out, etc.
It makes it SO SIMPLE! Because all of those expenses can really vary, it is nice to have freedom to have more for a busier birthday month but eat out less. Once the money is gone, then it is gone. It works well for us.