Budget Battles Part 2

I realized after posting yesterday that I didn't really explain what my budget plan was. So for those of you who are interested this is how I figured things out to make my life easier.

Using ibank I can keep track of all of my accounts (checking, savings, term deposits, and even credit cards). It is really fantastic because I can download all the info right from my bank or the credit card company. All I have to do is categorize each transaction and that takes less than 5 minutes. I have set up a monthly budget in ibank and so it easily generates reports on how we are doing each month. I can check to see how close we are to our budget limits as the month progresses. Unfortunately ibank doesn't run all the reports I would like it to, so that is were Excel comes in.

I have created two spreadsheets in Excel one for the General Budget and one for Savings.

The General Budget is as follows:
First a list of our income and the budgeted amount that we should receive.
Second our standard expenses. These are expenses that we know we will have every month (gas for cars, insurance, tithing, fast offerings, groceries, mortgage, HOA fee, and all of our utilities). Most of these we have set up through automatic bill pay so the just happen every month. They are also very predictable expenses so we have a budgeted amount for them too.
Third I have our other expenses. This is the tricky part. There are so many things that we spend money on that are not predictable. Do you budget money out as a yearly value or what? So I have included all other categories of expenses that I had set up in ibank that are not included in the standard expenses. Then I took our income minus our standard expenses and savings and that is how much other expenses gets each month. There are not budgeted amounts for each individual category, just one clump sum for the whole "other expenses" category.
The last part on the spreadsheet is savings. We have set up little savings accounts to save up for stuff (yes, very profound). These accounts included "fun money" for Devin and I so he can buy camera stuff or whatever and I can do whatever fun I want to do with my fun money. There are other accounts such as: House, for any home improvements or repairs. Vacation, because we would like to go on a real one someday. Anna, we figured we should save some money for her. Family, for any family expenses or things for the whole family. Gifts, stuff like birthdays and Christmas. Auto, for any auto expenses registration, etc. We have set up a small savings amount for each of these groups. That way we get in the habit of saving each month and then we also can save up for things that we want to buy.
Then using Excel's ability to add and subtract different parts of the spreadsheet I can enter the totals for the month that I just pull from ibank (yeah for cut and paste!). Then Excel will show the positive or negative difference for each of my groups. At the very bottom of the spreadsheet there is a spot for Total Income and Total Expenses and the difference positive or negative. If we have a positive difference that money is thrown into a general savings account. If there is a negative difference that amount is pulled form our general savings account to help us keep a standard balance. Are you confused yet??????? It makes more sense on paper.

Our Savings spreadsheet is really simple. It is just a list of all of our savings accounts and term deposits and how much money goes in and out each month. Just so we can have a record of how things are there.

Now before you think, "Who has time to keep up something like that???" It really is so easy. ibank does so much and I just cut and paste everything into Excel. Yes it took a bit of time yesterday to set everything up, but now it is set up it won't take that much time at all to keep up.

I hope that makes sense and answers some questions. I figured it would be better to post an additional bit on this than to try and leave all of that in the comment box. If you want any more info on this let me know. Everyone does stuff different. I've gotten lots of great ideas for tons of people. I hope you all can find something that works for you so you can win the budget battle.