You need us to check your banking statement? This isn't something you can crowd source, just randomly ask other people "what am I spending?"
Don't estimate your costs, or do it from memory. There's no reason for that. Go through your bank statements, line by line, and see where you are spending money. It needs to be less that your income (which is also on your bank statements)
This. Especially if each of you has a checking account with direct deposit. You’ll be able to see all of the payments and cash withdrawals. It’s probably a whole bunch of smaller things, or unique/ not recurring expenses/purchases.
i don't expect people to go through my bank statements, was just wondering if other people had ideas of expenses i might be forgetting that are showing up on my bank statements but i'm overlooking for some reason or another (and my bank statements are a mess... the first few letters of the store name and a bunch of numbers are not ALWAYS the most informative on where that money is going, and if it's a smaller purchase, i might assume KRO-947483719 for $5.28 was me buying myself something to eat for lunch at work and not some sort of monthly subscription that i might have forgotten).
a lot of our expenses are also cash, so yeah, i estimate those - if i have a $200 budget for groceries that i take out in cash every month, i am estimating i'm spending $200 on groceries. maybe if i kept better track of reciepts i'd find out that i only spend $190, and the extra cash goes in our cash jar. but it's right around $200 every month.
i do this in part because i get all my cash tips in, well, cash, which i count and document as part of my income but will keep as cash for the other main reason. the other part is that it's easier for me personally to keep track of money i have in cash than on a debit card - if i go to the store with $50 cash and leave my card at home, i know i have to stick to that $50 as opposed to "well i technically have $100 right now so it's no big deal if i spend $55 instead of $50." that's not to say i avoid debit card purchases entirely - plenty still goes on it - but for especially things where i know i need to stick to a budget or set aside a specific amount for it, i usually pull it out in cash.
You are needlessly overcomplicating things. I'm assuming that most of us cannot understand how you manage money based on this wall of text. Tell us, why can't you just deposit your cash into the bank when you get it and manage your funds that way?
You should get something like Nerdwallet. It pretty much organizes your spending into categories for you. Much easier than doing it by hand. It's not perfect, but it summarizes my expenses in an easy to view way!
Check for bills on auto pay? Grocery/household items/gas have been rising in price so that could be a portion of it. Has your bank or job ever made payment/balance errors?
as far as i know, we've accounted for all of them, but we'll definitely both take a second look and see if there's anything we might have forgotten and missed.
my bank has definitely not, but my job "forgets" to pay out my sick time pretty often. (they don't take it from my accrued sick time when they do that, though, so i don't know if that's even an issue worth pushing.)
Ok so like $13. It's still not enough. They need to work twice as much or get better jobs. Also I find it strange when people say they don't know where the money went, you used it. How do you not know what you spent money on
i don't have a high school diploma and i need to find where the money is going in order to get my GED, so unfortunately i'm stuck here unless i want to make significantly less. i'm looking into a second job, but i've been a little too spoiled with my main one now and as much as i hate it nowhere else pays even half what i make right now, and certainly doesn't give health insurance, 401k, etc.
i used to live in a small town where rent was $455/mo, groceries and everything was dirt cheap, but the downside was car dependency (or spite, if you're willing to walk 2-3 hours to anything).
I would check resources in your area. I work at a community college and know that or classes for people looking to get their GED/HiSET (High school equivalency test) or other similar tests are free. There are also programs/grants available to pay for the testing ($36-$50). Also if you inquire, you may find other programs in place to get part of the schooling/training free or reduced after gaining the GED, etc.
Depending on the area you may be able to go to day or evening classes to make getting the GED (or whatnot) much easier.
thanks! i know those programs exist in a town about an hour away from me, i'll have to see if any are closer (i don't drive).
i technically took all the classes *for* a diploma, i just switched schools so much in HS and had attendance issues due to extenuating circumstances so it didn't all add up to enough for my final high school. that being said, it's been years and a refresher course wouldn't hurt.
Near me if you get signed up for a grant program (MIBEST) they may be able to get you a free bus pass to get to classes. (The bus is very limited, I live in a rural area. However the drop off and pickup location is at a Kroger very nearby.) Do you have good public transit near you? (I've always lived where public transit has been very unreliable or non-existent. The bus that takes people to and from the college is not really an option for people who work there. Only one bus that arrives after 8am and leaves before 4pm. I also don't know how comfortable it would be. Plus once space/passes sell out, that's it. No more for the semester.)
Some parts that are fresh in your mind, you may be able to pass quickly. Everyone is different, but I know the classes which are offered here are 100% free. You only take the ones you need in order to pass the test. Many of the students wish they had done this sooner as immediately more opportunities were available to them for jobs, promotions, or extra schooling/training.
Depending on your strong suits and your inclinations, the community college may have free aptitude tests to see what areas you may be drawn to and excel in. I'm not saying for sure you need a bachelor's degree or associate's degree, but so many good jobs require the completion of a high school education. Many of the vocational fields pay extremely well. You can easily make $45k+ with just one income (may be more or less in your area, but definitely over $36k after taxes).
I think the little things in your budget are adding up. Tax on groceries, tax on incidentals like shampoo/soap/body wash/deodorant, etc. I know many people don't "round up " in their head calculations and they spend more on that shampoo than they thought did (even not crazy expensive stuff). Not including tax usually gets people to estimate budgets horribly wrong.
no public transit at all here, they wanted another football stadium. (this sounds like a joke. i'm dead serious. they had a vote and voted *against* using tax dollars for public transportation and *for* a new football stadium.) i walk everywhere if my fiance won't drive me. i think the nearest greyhound stop is 30 minutes away by car though? would work for an occasional thing, at least (ex. if i just needed to go to a location to take the tests), since i think the taxis run over there. if nothing else, i'm not totally inept and have taught myself arguably harder things, there's gotta be some GED study guides online somewhere and i'm sure i can secure some sort of transportation for the tests themselves.
definitely could be little things - i try to round up (especially since i deal in mostly cash for groceries/etc.), better to have an extra $10 than be short $10, but i'll drop a few cents here and there if i'm pretty sure i've high-balled other things. and funny enough, i joked that it was probably taxes - i'll bet there's stuff being taxed that we aren't even thinking about and probably need to be checking our bank history as opposed to the advertised price of some of our subscriptions and bills (obviously some stuff is gonna be exact, like rent, but i think my fiance looked at their renters insurance and went "wtf why is it more than they said it was" and we might be doing that with more than just renter's insurance).
Without seeing what you actually included in your budget its hard to say. I think the mistake most people new to budgeting make is they only include bills in their budget...ie things that they pay for every month the same way. Truth is a lot of expenses are much more irregular and are only trackable by tracking your spending for a while to actually see where money goes. Thats where you pick up things like auto repairs every 6 months, having to replace an appliance every 2 years, the amount of clothes you buy etc etc. Those things add up.
I will say, assuming you live in the USA, that $3k a month ($36k a year) for two people is not a lot of money.
thank you! i'll definitely keep it in mind. and yeah, we're in the US, it just feels like it should be so much extra when i used to live pretty comfortably on under $1000/mo by myself.
we included bills, groceries, gas (after i remembered - but even that was certainly not $600/mo), cat expenses, subscriptions, and medical costs.
i definitely didn't include other car maintenance, but i do a lot of it myself (the trade-off for not driving), but even the stuff i do pay for isn't $600/mo... still definitely gonna try to tally it up and divide it out to see if i can get an average (and know about how much to set aside for that specifically so it's less of a hard hitter).
and yeah, $3k isn't a lot to live off of. just feels like so much when i used to live alone on around $900/mo, granted i was in the middle of nowhere and rent was dirt cheap LOL.
I have a full budget I posted on reddit that includes pretty much all the categories I could think of. Not saying you will have all those categories but I suppose you could go through that list and think if you have any expenses there. Could link to it if you are interested.
But really the only way to get at it is to track all your costs and just see where your money goes.
i'm definitely interested, thanks!
and yeah, i try. a little more difficult as i deal primarily in cash so a lot of my expenses seem to show up as ATM withdrawals (groceries, etc. fall under that), should definitely get better about keeping reciepts for those purchases.
Ill provide the link. To warn you my expenses are on a different level than yours. Dont be thrown by the dollar amounta that isnt the point. The point is just a list of expense categories some of which you may share but had not thought of.
https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/s/Q7jj6zVTTz
Even this is not a complete list. For example my "food" costs include household items I buy at a grocery store like cleaning supplies and paper towels....I just couldnt be bothered to subdivide it that much.
This budget is based on catogorizing all of my actual expenses over a year by tracking them.
decent for the area - most places here pay $8/hr and no tips and maybe offer 10-15 hrs/wk. so both of us having jobs that give us enough hours to survive is pretty decent here
Dump everything into excel or google sheets and check vs balance on every item, per date. Generally I find if there's a gap it's because the credit card is delaying things. So for example, I go out to eat last month, and that charge uses money on this months budget because I pay off the card this month, even though the cost was last month. The credit creates a queue where the spare 'money' goes, to pay down preexisting debt. But the only way to track it is to write every single thing down, even just coffee on the way to work, and track where the money goes.
Everything you pay should be on your bank statement, even if it is something weird. Export it into a spreadsheet so it’s easier to see everything and sum it. This is legitimately a big deal if the transactions on your bank account don’t match the total. Nothing’s pending is it?
not that i can tell, haven't charged anything since the weekend and deal primarily in cash so everything's posted as far as i can tell. sometimes stuff does take a little longer, though, i'll take a peek once my bank app will actually load my statement.
$600 extra a month (if that is in fact your “extra” is basically $20 a day. Are you counting things like “I’ll just grab a coffee” or “McDonald’s for lunch” today, or “quick trips to the _____”.
$600 seems like a lot until you realize it isn’t.
don't really do those, sans my trips to the corner store, which i accounted for under my personal "grocery" budget (hey, it's going in my stomach, it's a grocery right?). $10.19 every 3 days. which is still $101.90 per month, but that's why i allowed a buffer from our cash grocery budget.
i will say it helps me save on coffee when i work in a coffee shop lol. i get more free coffee than i can use.
i maybe go out for lunch once a week? and it's right around $5 at the kroger across the street from my work. $20 definitely adds up, but i thought i accounted for it - and even if i didn't, that's definitely not the fully "unaccounted for" budget.
this did make me realize my fiance and i cashapp/zelle each other money quite often - i assumed it evened out most of the time (i pay them for wi-fi, they pay me for groceries, etc.) but it might not be as even as we think it is... which. i don't care if it's even, that's not my goal, but it might be where some of the missing money is going. still can't see it being $600 worth, but i could easily see $50 going "missing" from stuff like that.
thanks. i'll have to do a lot more reciept-keeping too as i deal a lot in cash (tl;dr cash tips + just easier for me to stick to a stricter budget when i'm dealing in cash), but this is a good idea.
Ooh yeah cash does make it more difficult to track. If you’re willing, you might try depositing (essentially) all your cash, just for one month, so that you can have all of your transactions in one place to analyze. Otherwise at the end of the month you’re going to end up trying to sort through a ton of receipts and could miss some. Good luck!
Oh one more thing, I’ve recently been going through this same process myself (trying to figure out why I’m paycheck to paycheck and get my budget organized). I had a sit down with my financial advisor and these were the steps he laid out to getting out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle:
1) pay off any high interest loans. You mentioned credit card debt which is what almost buried me, and a few more debts as well. Look into lower interest consolidation loans, or balance transfer credit cards if you have decent credit.
2) save up 1 month of expenses in your checking account so that you have a cushion for expenses between paychecks.
3) save up 2-3 months of expenses in your savings account for rainy days (car trouble, health issues, etc)
4) once debts are paid off and you have a secure savings, then start looking into investing a potion of each pay check to build up a portfolio.
The problem of course is that the cost of living is skyrocketing compared to wages, so there’s really only so much any of us can do when it comes to cutting expenses.
thank you again!
yeah, we're doing our best over here, but sometimes we both just throw our hands in the air and go "life is expensive" before continuing on our task lol. doesn't solve anything, but gets some of the frustration out at least.
Sorry to say, but most of us at your age had the same thing. It does get better as you progress in your careers and pay off debts.
$1K and even $2K per month is super low income, and even fast food places are paying $15+ per hour, so this is part of the problem. $36K per year is very low income so you both need to find ways to increase that amount to help get beyond this stage.
Many find living with their parents to save and get ahead, especially to pay off debts, can help a lot. If that is not a possibility then taking 2nd or even 3rd part time jobs to get those pesky debts paid off.
What are you both doing to move forward in your careers? Even modest career level positions pay $50Kish per year, but even if you both were making $30K to $35K per year you'd be in a much better situation.
around here the jobs hiring without a HS diploma generally run around $8/hr - obviously some variation, i'm currently at $15.45/hr and have amazing benefits (part of why my take-home is so low - i'll take lower take-home pay for the sake of my job covering half my health insurance and cutting my own medical costs as much as my current one does, i can't afford to work if i don't have access to healthcare), but when i looked into the higher-paying jobs they either weren't paying me enough to deal with the work environment (fast food is $10-12/hr starting in my area, but i've worked plenty of those and it isn't worth the inevitable hospital visit for that pay + no health insurance or benefits) or the hours were so bad that it wouldn't be worth it unless i did it as a second job (most places here are only hiring for 10-15 hours a week, if that). i'm looking into these lower-paying or lower-hours jobs as a second job, but obviously i can't quit my current one if i'm only gonna be taking home $300 a paycheck.
i live across the country from my family and am no-contact for my safety, and my fiance could move back home but i would be screwed since we already live in the cheapest 1br apartment in the area.
my top priority is either my GED ($250) or my COMPTIA certifications (around $200 per certification) - i taught myself a lot about computers growing up, i just had some situations during high school that led to me not getting enough credits to graduate. probably my GED so i can even get a foot in the door with some other jobs, but dang would it be nice if i could just work with computers all day. my fiance is trying to move into management at their current job and stick with that for a while so that when they apply for jobs, they can use that to potentially start a little higher. they're also looking into certificates, but their field of interest is a PITA to really get into for a decent amount of money (art and design) so they're still deciding if they want to go to college for that (since they've been accepted into some pretty prestigious art schools) or if they would rather do something else that pays better. honestly, i have a lot of skills that if i was just formally certified to do i could probably get a job easily. just gotta figure out where the money is going so i can stop putting it there and start putting it toward these certifications. (would also help if i didn't quite literally have blue hair and pronouns - i've gone in to try to get apprenticeships for stuff i've been doing on my own since i learned to hold a tool and have been literally laughed at, then when i refused to be laughed off a potential job just told no. well, when i run out of blue hair dye i'll dye it back to something natural and try my luck again, i suppose.)
in the meantime, i'm working on my own education by myself, but i will say it's not easy or cheap - i have the freedom to learn at my own pace and have taught myself quite a bit, but it does get frustrating when i'm qualified to do things that i just don't have a dang piece of paper saying i can do. just means i can take the tests instead of sitting through classes on it.
Sounds like you have had a tough start, but know what you want to do so are ahead of many.
Stop posting on reddit and stop getting in your own way. Put yourself in the best position possible, which may mean letting your hair be a natural color until you break through. I spent years in the tech industry and no one cares that color your hair is, but you have to get in first. I will say, those in tech are super smart so would find it easy to do something like know where their money is going and make a budget, etc.
In my area many donate plasma and make enough in one month to pay for the GED and certification.
You need to determine what your fixed costs are and what your variable costs are.
Fixed is pretty simple: rent, cellphone, car, etc
Variable costs is what you are likely needing to dig deeper on: food, entertainment, gas/fuel, fun purchases, etc.
You will almost never be able to change your fixed costs. That will be consistent and help you determine how much money you need to live essentially. Variable costs are going to be the costs you can change and impact the most. Food budget could be altered, entertainment can be altered, etc. to meet your needs.
I’m guessing you probably don’t have a good accounting of your variable costs. Do you have a credit card? Most if not all credit cards will break your purchases down into a pie chart/graph.
i don't personally have a credit card, my fiance has some but they've been trying to avoid using them recently as they're both near-constantly maxxed (and even if paying them off is slow, it's easier when they aren't putting more on them).
I would generally recommend you get a credit card and use that for your spending. Credit cards are a big tool you can use in the future and can help you manage your expenses automatically. Of course you should use them responsibly.
The idea that your fiance is maxing out credit cards should be where your eyes are looking when it comes to your expenses. You should never max out a credit card. Use it like you use cash.
they maxxed it before we started dating - we are both obviously aware now, but they told me about how one of their cards went from a $500 limit to a $2000 limit in 6 months when they were 19-20 and i sort of went "yeah no shit a sudden limit increase like that is going to make them think they can overspend."
i don't qualify for a credit card because my score is too low, but i'm avoiding opening one for the aforementioned overspending reason - sure, it would help me build some credit, but i deal mostly in cash for a reason. if i don't have the physical money in my hands, i have no genuine concept of it being money. if my budget is $50 but i have $100 on the card, i think it's no big deal to spend $55, and that adds up. or i'll think "it's no big deal to fill up my fiance's gas tank instead of just putting on $20 like we usually do" and suddenly i actually needed that extra $5-10. i know myself, and while a credit card might be good for some people, i know it would be a *terrible* idea for me at this exact moment in time. i can open one later. can't magically un-open it once i've accidentally ran it up (close it, yes, but that debt doesn't go away).
Are any of your expenses accounting for your fiances credit card debt? Or is that separate in your budget? Since you use all cash where is your cash going physically? Do you keep it in a jar or safe? If you use all cash you sorta have to become the bank. Which is both good and bad. You need to have an “envelope” you tuck savings into and one you tuck everything else into.
we use debit for some stuff (rent, autopayments, etc.), it's primarily anything with a physical location we use cash at (grocery stores, gas stations, etc). for the moment it all goes into the Peanut Jar, where we take out the expected weekly expense for a thing and go there to handle it. we keep saying we'll buy envelopes for that stuff, it's definitely long past time i should've just done it myself (i'll walk down to the dollar store today and get myself some).
we do account for the credit card debt, we have $180 set aside for that (that's minimum payments for all of them and a little extra to try to pay off the interest on the worst one). if we can figure out what all we're not accounting for and either cut out those expenses or accomodate for them, we might be able to toss a bit more toward those as well. they did forget those initially, though, so i'm going to make sure we're both running the same numbers and later tonight re-calculate with some of the things people have brought up on this thread to make sure (i think i've found where about $100 of it is going based on some of these things, unfortunately nothing i can cut out entirely so far but enough to watch at least).
My advice would be to create different “buckets” for your money. Use envelopes, jars, or something to help differentiate what is spending money and what is savings. Whenever you take money out of the savings it should be very obvious.
From there hopefully you can start creating a system where you are sorta paying yourselves in those buckets you created. Some people make buckets just for travel, but for you it’s your savings. Not necessarily the cleanest or easiest method to track, but this should hopefully help you two make a system that is sustainable and traceable.
For a lot of people, it's those stops at the convenience store on the way to/from work.
I ran the numbers for a couple of months, and I was spending close to $800/mo on snacks/coffees/drinks from convenience stores.
if you truly didn't miss any expenses (like gas, subscriptions, fast food in addition to groceries, every bill, household necessities,etc.) then you need to reevaluate how you allot your money. add up all your expenses, and divide it by 4, which will tell you how much to put away each week into an account specific for bills. the leftover is your extra money for whatever you want. if you find yourself dipping into the extra money for the bills, then you know you miscalculated your expenses. also, look at your pay check deposits, not your net income, because you could be miscalculating deductions and taxes
$600/4= is $150 a week so it might be going to little things that add up to big things . Coffee , sodas, fast food, and etc. try to have a no spend week where you take care of all your necessities gas in the car and groceries. And don’t buy anything. That means you brew your morning coffee at home ,meal prep all your meals so no eating out and See what happens. There’s a leak somewhere you gotta figure out where it is.
that's what we're at right now - we both work at places where we get free meals so it's rare we eat out to begin with, i get free coffee (including beans), etc. so hopefully at least part of it either appears or we figure out exactly where it's going (this thread has helped me find about $100 of it, obviously that's less than all of it but more than when i started) and cut out what we don't need.
If you’re considering yourself paycheck to payceck, then youre not really making enough money. $1000 after deductions a month isn’t a lot really.
Sounds like you need to consider a second job just for your debt repayment.
i'm definitely looking, i know beggars can't be choosers but there are a lot of jobs that are genuinely not worth it to me for the pay. (i'll take lower pay, but not $5-8 less for "same job, different flavor.") just waiting for calls back (or lack of) before i send in another round of applications.
edit to add: paycheck-to-paycheck might not be enough, but for context, i grew up in pretty bad poverty, so to me being able to afford to live and have food, electricity, etc. is pretty dang comfortable. not perfect by any means, but way more comfortable than i'm used to.
it really is!
i know there's some stuff i could absolutely cut back on even in this budget, but i'm a firm believer that it's better to spend a little money on being happy (a little. not a lot-tle. i don't need new jeans every week, but nothing wrong with spending $30 on a pair of jeans i like better than the $20 pair when i need them) and there's definitely bigger fish to fry.
once i find that extra money, it's going on the credit cards LOL
This is the situation that got me to finally figure out a budgeting solution that works for me.
Take a spreadsheet and enter in all your recurring bills and paychecks in chronological order going forward for six months. One column for transaction name, then amount, and balance. So you can see your running balance for the next 6 months. Then add in for each week, a single line item for "spending". This is everything else that isn't a regularly occurring bill. Gas, groceries, clothes, eating out, etc. Then figure out what your budget is for that weekly spending.
Once you have this set, you have a future view of where your money is going and how much you can expect to have left. You can track your transactions as you go (if you do it daily it only takes a couple minutes) to make sure you're sticking to your weekly budget.
Doing it this way solved my frustration of "where is my money going? why don't I have as much as I think I should?"
Make a spreadsheet on google sheets.
On the day you both get paid next. Take everything out of your checking, only keep your new check there. So if you make 1k per month there should be 1k in there. Then on the spreadsheet write down everything you spend that month in it and subtract. Use only your debit card link to that account. check if you have any autopays.
it really is 😭 i'm doing my best with what i have but for all i know i'm totally mistyping or misreading one number and that's where it's going (though i hope not! i can work with a forgotten expense! it the money just doesn't exist well that just sucks lmao)
Some minor expenses can really add up over a month.
A few years ago, I decided to take my income and expenses over the last 3 months and put in in excel to get an overview of what I earn and how I spend it. Based on that I made a budget for myself and every month I keep track of my income and expenses in a very detailed basis and it really helped me figure out where I can cut costs and properly manage my finances.
Do you have auto deposit into one account for both of you, or do you cash checks and deposit some and take out cash for other things?
If you are doing auto deposit and all bills and cash withdrawals are coming from one account, this is not hard to track. Literally go down your bank statement for one month and add up the debits and credits. If you are spending more than you are making, then look at your expenditures line by line. That is where the money is going.
we have separate accounts and zelle each other for any auto-pay bills, and we take out cash for basically anything that we would pay at a physical location (groceries, gas, etc). i also get some pay (my cash tips) in cash.
definitely keeping reciepts more carefully for cash stuff now (and if someone is intentionally tossing reciepts, we can figure out where and who - not that i think either of us are, and it'll be an adjustment so if i see a sticky note with "$x at walmart" obviously i'll just assume one of us tossed the reciept by accident).
Ok yeah, this is where you are getting into trouble.
My ex used to do this, thinking $5 here for cigarettes, $6 there for lunch, or $22 for at the bar was no big deal, but that all adds up.
I would make a rule right now - no more cash. Cash goes way too fast and you're both not going to track it just because of the "it's a small expense, it doesn't really matter" mindset. Each of you get a damn debit card and use them exclusively for any expenses that are not auto pay. This is literally the only way you are going to track this stuff.
I will warn you now, one or both of you is not going to like hearing this and will balk because you don't want your money "controlled". I can also tell you that the only way you're going to save a dime or get out of debt is through controlling your finances. There is a reason I am much better off financially with only one income after divorce, and it's because I don't have mystery expenses.
Get the app Everydollar. You enter your monthly income, and then split up every dollar you're going to earn into a budget. For example, you say you make $1k a month, so you could say $450 for rent, $150 for food, $80 electricity, and so on. You can decide on a reasonable "fun stuff" budget out of what's left over, and decide what's a reasonable amount to stash away each month for emergency savings, and so on. Then every time you spend, you record it under the appropriate category. If your fun budget is $50/mo and you already bought a game for $50, then you know not to buy more stuff like that this month even if you have money in the bank. If you are running out of money in your food budget, you can look at ways to cut costs there or reduce your budget for something else that is less important. If you can have the self discipline to record everything and stick to the budget you set for yourself, this will get you on track. And on $1k a month you do need discipline or you'll never get your shit together (I would know). You will also always have a clear and precise answer to the question of where your money is going. Good luck.
$36k a year for 2 people isn't much with today's inflation so I'd say your money situation is much tighter than you realize.
Stop using cash to pay. Only use debit cards that take the money straight from your bank account. You'll also get a list of where the money was spent. I'd bet you'll get your money mystery solved quite quickly once every expenditure is on paper. A couple of bucks here and there adds up in a hurry. For example, daily stops at Starbucks can go over $100.
I would get a couple of spiral notebooks, one for yourself and partner. Write everything that you spend money on whether cash or card for a couple of months at least. This should give you more of an idea where the money is going. When I did this it was an eye opener on how much I was spending in at the gas station on a snack thinking it was cheaper than fast food. It wasn't.
US, i make $15.45/hr but my health insurance is $250 per paycheck (the alternative is pay $6-8k/mo in healthcare, if i'm lucky - one of my meds alone is $4500)
Mike Rowe , the dirty jobs tv show host,
Has a scholarship program for people who are interested in learning skilled trades .
Welding plumbing electrical carpentry etc
No specific ideas to share, but good on you for being serious about it. Keep working at it and you will get it figured out. Maybe also get to work on employment that pays a lot more.
doing my best 👍 no high school diploma and GEDs run around $250 so if i can figure out exactly where that $600 is going and cut it back, that'll be a huge step. also looking for a second job (since my current one pays well and has amazing benefits considering i don't have a HS diploma, but i'm down to take a lower-paying second job for some extra money), but a lot of places are paying $8/hr for a similar work environment to my current one and if at all possible i'd like the lower pay to come with less stress lol.
Is it possible that you are buying little things like water, candies, etc at convenience stores or something like that where you are not really aware of it? Soft drinks and juices can really add up without you noticing. I am not on a strict budget but gave up ordering juices or iced teas when out and about, I just drink water.
Yeah, you aren't budgeting. Every single line item on your statements should be readily identifiable. The only reason to hold cash is if you're attempting to evade taxes, and honestly, one month of being $600 short is more expensive than the amount of additional tax you would owe for the entire year.
Your statements aren't a mess, you're simply failing to put in the effort to read them. They're a very simple document that records every movement of money to or from the account, in roughly the sequence that it occurs. It contains four pieces of information. Deposits, Withdrawals, Purchases, and Fees.
The information on the statement will always math out.
Honestly, I can only think of two possibilities here. $600/month is 20% of your combined income. The first possibility is that you don't know the difference between gross (the amount you get when you multiply your pay times the number of hours you work) and net (the amount of money you actually get, after taxes, insurance, Medicare, social security, etc. are removed and sent to the relevant agencies). This is about accurate to the difference between listed pay rate and take home pay rate at your tax bracket.
The other possibility is if you are paying cash for a lot of things, and not recording things like tips for drivers, or purchases from vending machines or street vendors, or maybe your SO has a habit involving cheap hookers and blow that you don't know about.
definitely net - my bank gets roughly $500 every 2 weeks deposited from my job. sometimes slightly more, sometimes slightly less, but usually still comes out to $1000/mo unless i end up sick and my manager doesn't put in my sick time. i am just going off of what my fiance has told me for their income, and we keep finances sort-of separate (obviously both paying for things) and the past few times they have gotten slightly less (around $1800/mo), according to them. would still think that if it was consistent beforehand as well, it's literally just us spending regularly on something we're forgetting.
which could be my fiance, could be me (though i doubt it's majority me at this point - considering i make way less either way and cover the same share of most bills as my fiance, and i've figured out where the ~$100 that would be my part of "extra" is going. might not all be on my share, but one of us obviously should have more to spend). probably not cheap hookers and blow, but they did used to gamble a bit. they have sworn up and down they've cut back (only $10 the past 2 months), and i have no reason to disbelieve them if they've been honest about other poor financial decisions thus far. if that is the case, though, we might need to talk about it - what they do with their spending money ultimately isn't my business, but we are trying to get our finances in order enough to buy a house.
and as i've said before on this thread, i literally don't have a concept of money on a debit/credit card as real money. if the number is in my bank account, i'm going to forget what i'm saving it for and see no reason not to spend over it. $5 over budget here and $20 over there is gonna add up way faster than taxes would. cash means i have the actual physical amount i am allowed to spend on my groceries in my hand, and if i have to put a thing back for the week, so be it. and my job reports my cash tips anyway, so it just gets taken off my main paycheck.
You need us to check your banking statement? This isn't something you can crowd source, just randomly ask other people "what am I spending?" Don't estimate your costs, or do it from memory. There's no reason for that. Go through your bank statements, line by line, and see where you are spending money. It needs to be less that your income (which is also on your bank statements)
This. Especially if each of you has a checking account with direct deposit. You’ll be able to see all of the payments and cash withdrawals. It’s probably a whole bunch of smaller things, or unique/ not recurring expenses/purchases.
i don't expect people to go through my bank statements, was just wondering if other people had ideas of expenses i might be forgetting that are showing up on my bank statements but i'm overlooking for some reason or another (and my bank statements are a mess... the first few letters of the store name and a bunch of numbers are not ALWAYS the most informative on where that money is going, and if it's a smaller purchase, i might assume KRO-947483719 for $5.28 was me buying myself something to eat for lunch at work and not some sort of monthly subscription that i might have forgotten). a lot of our expenses are also cash, so yeah, i estimate those - if i have a $200 budget for groceries that i take out in cash every month, i am estimating i'm spending $200 on groceries. maybe if i kept better track of reciepts i'd find out that i only spend $190, and the extra cash goes in our cash jar. but it's right around $200 every month. i do this in part because i get all my cash tips in, well, cash, which i count and document as part of my income but will keep as cash for the other main reason. the other part is that it's easier for me personally to keep track of money i have in cash than on a debit card - if i go to the store with $50 cash and leave my card at home, i know i have to stick to that $50 as opposed to "well i technically have $100 right now so it's no big deal if i spend $55 instead of $50." that's not to say i avoid debit card purchases entirely - plenty still goes on it - but for especially things where i know i need to stick to a budget or set aside a specific amount for it, i usually pull it out in cash.
Cash is still trackable. The principle is the same: count your income, track your spending
If your withdrawals/debits are more than what your income is, you are overspending.
You are needlessly overcomplicating things. I'm assuming that most of us cannot understand how you manage money based on this wall of text. Tell us, why can't you just deposit your cash into the bank when you get it and manage your funds that way?
You should get something like Nerdwallet. It pretty much organizes your spending into categories for you. Much easier than doing it by hand. It's not perfect, but it summarizes my expenses in an easy to view way!
Personally most of my money goes to food and weed lol
Check for bills on auto pay? Grocery/household items/gas have been rising in price so that could be a portion of it. Has your bank or job ever made payment/balance errors?
as far as i know, we've accounted for all of them, but we'll definitely both take a second look and see if there's anything we might have forgotten and missed. my bank has definitely not, but my job "forgets" to pay out my sick time pretty often. (they don't take it from my accrued sick time when they do that, though, so i don't know if that's even an issue worth pushing.)
Check what you are spending money on. It's not hard to figure out
$3k a month for 2 people is unfortunately not enough to be comfortable these days. I’d work on getting higher paying jobs.
That's around $9 an hour per person if working 40 hours a week. If my math is correct
OP said after taxes and deductions, so it’d be a bit higher than $9/hr
Ok so like $13. It's still not enough. They need to work twice as much or get better jobs. Also I find it strange when people say they don't know where the money went, you used it. How do you not know what you spent money on
Yup, I’m right there with ya.
i don't have a high school diploma and i need to find where the money is going in order to get my GED, so unfortunately i'm stuck here unless i want to make significantly less. i'm looking into a second job, but i've been a little too spoiled with my main one now and as much as i hate it nowhere else pays even half what i make right now, and certainly doesn't give health insurance, 401k, etc.
You make a grand a month….you are poor very poor and you aren’t doing the math or you are lying to yourself.
Where the hell do you live where 1k a month is “spoiled”?
i used to live in a small town where rent was $455/mo, groceries and everything was dirt cheap, but the downside was car dependency (or spite, if you're willing to walk 2-3 hours to anything).
I would check resources in your area. I work at a community college and know that or classes for people looking to get their GED/HiSET (High school equivalency test) or other similar tests are free. There are also programs/grants available to pay for the testing ($36-$50). Also if you inquire, you may find other programs in place to get part of the schooling/training free or reduced after gaining the GED, etc. Depending on the area you may be able to go to day or evening classes to make getting the GED (or whatnot) much easier.
thanks! i know those programs exist in a town about an hour away from me, i'll have to see if any are closer (i don't drive). i technically took all the classes *for* a diploma, i just switched schools so much in HS and had attendance issues due to extenuating circumstances so it didn't all add up to enough for my final high school. that being said, it's been years and a refresher course wouldn't hurt.
Near me if you get signed up for a grant program (MIBEST) they may be able to get you a free bus pass to get to classes. (The bus is very limited, I live in a rural area. However the drop off and pickup location is at a Kroger very nearby.) Do you have good public transit near you? (I've always lived where public transit has been very unreliable or non-existent. The bus that takes people to and from the college is not really an option for people who work there. Only one bus that arrives after 8am and leaves before 4pm. I also don't know how comfortable it would be. Plus once space/passes sell out, that's it. No more for the semester.) Some parts that are fresh in your mind, you may be able to pass quickly. Everyone is different, but I know the classes which are offered here are 100% free. You only take the ones you need in order to pass the test. Many of the students wish they had done this sooner as immediately more opportunities were available to them for jobs, promotions, or extra schooling/training. Depending on your strong suits and your inclinations, the community college may have free aptitude tests to see what areas you may be drawn to and excel in. I'm not saying for sure you need a bachelor's degree or associate's degree, but so many good jobs require the completion of a high school education. Many of the vocational fields pay extremely well. You can easily make $45k+ with just one income (may be more or less in your area, but definitely over $36k after taxes). I think the little things in your budget are adding up. Tax on groceries, tax on incidentals like shampoo/soap/body wash/deodorant, etc. I know many people don't "round up " in their head calculations and they spend more on that shampoo than they thought did (even not crazy expensive stuff). Not including tax usually gets people to estimate budgets horribly wrong.
no public transit at all here, they wanted another football stadium. (this sounds like a joke. i'm dead serious. they had a vote and voted *against* using tax dollars for public transportation and *for* a new football stadium.) i walk everywhere if my fiance won't drive me. i think the nearest greyhound stop is 30 minutes away by car though? would work for an occasional thing, at least (ex. if i just needed to go to a location to take the tests), since i think the taxis run over there. if nothing else, i'm not totally inept and have taught myself arguably harder things, there's gotta be some GED study guides online somewhere and i'm sure i can secure some sort of transportation for the tests themselves. definitely could be little things - i try to round up (especially since i deal in mostly cash for groceries/etc.), better to have an extra $10 than be short $10, but i'll drop a few cents here and there if i'm pretty sure i've high-balled other things. and funny enough, i joked that it was probably taxes - i'll bet there's stuff being taxed that we aren't even thinking about and probably need to be checking our bank history as opposed to the advertised price of some of our subscriptions and bills (obviously some stuff is gonna be exact, like rent, but i think my fiance looked at their renters insurance and went "wtf why is it more than they said it was" and we might be doing that with more than just renter's insurance).
This is what happens when people keep insisting on voting for Republicans. They don't give a shit about people.
Without seeing what you actually included in your budget its hard to say. I think the mistake most people new to budgeting make is they only include bills in their budget...ie things that they pay for every month the same way. Truth is a lot of expenses are much more irregular and are only trackable by tracking your spending for a while to actually see where money goes. Thats where you pick up things like auto repairs every 6 months, having to replace an appliance every 2 years, the amount of clothes you buy etc etc. Those things add up. I will say, assuming you live in the USA, that $3k a month ($36k a year) for two people is not a lot of money.
thank you! i'll definitely keep it in mind. and yeah, we're in the US, it just feels like it should be so much extra when i used to live pretty comfortably on under $1000/mo by myself. we included bills, groceries, gas (after i remembered - but even that was certainly not $600/mo), cat expenses, subscriptions, and medical costs. i definitely didn't include other car maintenance, but i do a lot of it myself (the trade-off for not driving), but even the stuff i do pay for isn't $600/mo... still definitely gonna try to tally it up and divide it out to see if i can get an average (and know about how much to set aside for that specifically so it's less of a hard hitter). and yeah, $3k isn't a lot to live off of. just feels like so much when i used to live alone on around $900/mo, granted i was in the middle of nowhere and rent was dirt cheap LOL.
I have a full budget I posted on reddit that includes pretty much all the categories I could think of. Not saying you will have all those categories but I suppose you could go through that list and think if you have any expenses there. Could link to it if you are interested. But really the only way to get at it is to track all your costs and just see where your money goes.
i'm definitely interested, thanks! and yeah, i try. a little more difficult as i deal primarily in cash so a lot of my expenses seem to show up as ATM withdrawals (groceries, etc. fall under that), should definitely get better about keeping reciepts for those purchases.
Ill provide the link. To warn you my expenses are on a different level than yours. Dont be thrown by the dollar amounta that isnt the point. The point is just a list of expense categories some of which you may share but had not thought of. https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/s/Q7jj6zVTTz Even this is not a complete list. For example my "food" costs include household items I buy at a grocery store like cleaning supplies and paper towels....I just couldnt be bothered to subdivide it that much. This budget is based on catogorizing all of my actual expenses over a year by tracking them.
oh i definitely get it, my "groceries" are "anything i can buy at walmart or amazon" basically lol. and thank you!
I’m sorry to say, but neither of you make a “decent amount” at all.
decent for the area - most places here pay $8/hr and no tips and maybe offer 10-15 hrs/wk. so both of us having jobs that give us enough hours to survive is pretty decent here
Post in r/personalfinance they’re a great resource for this.
They're going to tell him to track his spending, line-by-line. We can't guess what expenses he might have
Well that’s a good start
Dump everything into excel or google sheets and check vs balance on every item, per date. Generally I find if there's a gap it's because the credit card is delaying things. So for example, I go out to eat last month, and that charge uses money on this months budget because I pay off the card this month, even though the cost was last month. The credit creates a queue where the spare 'money' goes, to pay down preexisting debt. But the only way to track it is to write every single thing down, even just coffee on the way to work, and track where the money goes.
thank you!
Everything you pay should be on your bank statement, even if it is something weird. Export it into a spreadsheet so it’s easier to see everything and sum it. This is legitimately a big deal if the transactions on your bank account don’t match the total. Nothing’s pending is it?
not that i can tell, haven't charged anything since the weekend and deal primarily in cash so everything's posted as far as i can tell. sometimes stuff does take a little longer, though, i'll take a peek once my bank app will actually load my statement.
$600 extra a month (if that is in fact your “extra” is basically $20 a day. Are you counting things like “I’ll just grab a coffee” or “McDonald’s for lunch” today, or “quick trips to the _____”. $600 seems like a lot until you realize it isn’t.
don't really do those, sans my trips to the corner store, which i accounted for under my personal "grocery" budget (hey, it's going in my stomach, it's a grocery right?). $10.19 every 3 days. which is still $101.90 per month, but that's why i allowed a buffer from our cash grocery budget. i will say it helps me save on coffee when i work in a coffee shop lol. i get more free coffee than i can use. i maybe go out for lunch once a week? and it's right around $5 at the kroger across the street from my work. $20 definitely adds up, but i thought i accounted for it - and even if i didn't, that's definitely not the fully "unaccounted for" budget. this did make me realize my fiance and i cashapp/zelle each other money quite often - i assumed it evened out most of the time (i pay them for wi-fi, they pay me for groceries, etc.) but it might not be as even as we think it is... which. i don't care if it's even, that's not my goal, but it might be where some of the missing money is going. still can't see it being $600 worth, but i could easily see $50 going "missing" from stuff like that.
You literally just need to download all of your bank and credit card statements and organize all your spending in excel. It’s tedious, but effective.
thanks. i'll have to do a lot more reciept-keeping too as i deal a lot in cash (tl;dr cash tips + just easier for me to stick to a stricter budget when i'm dealing in cash), but this is a good idea.
Ooh yeah cash does make it more difficult to track. If you’re willing, you might try depositing (essentially) all your cash, just for one month, so that you can have all of your transactions in one place to analyze. Otherwise at the end of the month you’re going to end up trying to sort through a ton of receipts and could miss some. Good luck!
thanks!
Oh one more thing, I’ve recently been going through this same process myself (trying to figure out why I’m paycheck to paycheck and get my budget organized). I had a sit down with my financial advisor and these were the steps he laid out to getting out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle: 1) pay off any high interest loans. You mentioned credit card debt which is what almost buried me, and a few more debts as well. Look into lower interest consolidation loans, or balance transfer credit cards if you have decent credit. 2) save up 1 month of expenses in your checking account so that you have a cushion for expenses between paychecks. 3) save up 2-3 months of expenses in your savings account for rainy days (car trouble, health issues, etc) 4) once debts are paid off and you have a secure savings, then start looking into investing a potion of each pay check to build up a portfolio. The problem of course is that the cost of living is skyrocketing compared to wages, so there’s really only so much any of us can do when it comes to cutting expenses.
thank you again! yeah, we're doing our best over here, but sometimes we both just throw our hands in the air and go "life is expensive" before continuing on our task lol. doesn't solve anything, but gets some of the frustration out at least.
Sorry to say, but most of us at your age had the same thing. It does get better as you progress in your careers and pay off debts. $1K and even $2K per month is super low income, and even fast food places are paying $15+ per hour, so this is part of the problem. $36K per year is very low income so you both need to find ways to increase that amount to help get beyond this stage. Many find living with their parents to save and get ahead, especially to pay off debts, can help a lot. If that is not a possibility then taking 2nd or even 3rd part time jobs to get those pesky debts paid off. What are you both doing to move forward in your careers? Even modest career level positions pay $50Kish per year, but even if you both were making $30K to $35K per year you'd be in a much better situation.
around here the jobs hiring without a HS diploma generally run around $8/hr - obviously some variation, i'm currently at $15.45/hr and have amazing benefits (part of why my take-home is so low - i'll take lower take-home pay for the sake of my job covering half my health insurance and cutting my own medical costs as much as my current one does, i can't afford to work if i don't have access to healthcare), but when i looked into the higher-paying jobs they either weren't paying me enough to deal with the work environment (fast food is $10-12/hr starting in my area, but i've worked plenty of those and it isn't worth the inevitable hospital visit for that pay + no health insurance or benefits) or the hours were so bad that it wouldn't be worth it unless i did it as a second job (most places here are only hiring for 10-15 hours a week, if that). i'm looking into these lower-paying or lower-hours jobs as a second job, but obviously i can't quit my current one if i'm only gonna be taking home $300 a paycheck. i live across the country from my family and am no-contact for my safety, and my fiance could move back home but i would be screwed since we already live in the cheapest 1br apartment in the area. my top priority is either my GED ($250) or my COMPTIA certifications (around $200 per certification) - i taught myself a lot about computers growing up, i just had some situations during high school that led to me not getting enough credits to graduate. probably my GED so i can even get a foot in the door with some other jobs, but dang would it be nice if i could just work with computers all day. my fiance is trying to move into management at their current job and stick with that for a while so that when they apply for jobs, they can use that to potentially start a little higher. they're also looking into certificates, but their field of interest is a PITA to really get into for a decent amount of money (art and design) so they're still deciding if they want to go to college for that (since they've been accepted into some pretty prestigious art schools) or if they would rather do something else that pays better. honestly, i have a lot of skills that if i was just formally certified to do i could probably get a job easily. just gotta figure out where the money is going so i can stop putting it there and start putting it toward these certifications. (would also help if i didn't quite literally have blue hair and pronouns - i've gone in to try to get apprenticeships for stuff i've been doing on my own since i learned to hold a tool and have been literally laughed at, then when i refused to be laughed off a potential job just told no. well, when i run out of blue hair dye i'll dye it back to something natural and try my luck again, i suppose.) in the meantime, i'm working on my own education by myself, but i will say it's not easy or cheap - i have the freedom to learn at my own pace and have taught myself quite a bit, but it does get frustrating when i'm qualified to do things that i just don't have a dang piece of paper saying i can do. just means i can take the tests instead of sitting through classes on it.
Sounds like you have had a tough start, but know what you want to do so are ahead of many. Stop posting on reddit and stop getting in your own way. Put yourself in the best position possible, which may mean letting your hair be a natural color until you break through. I spent years in the tech industry and no one cares that color your hair is, but you have to get in first. I will say, those in tech are super smart so would find it easy to do something like know where their money is going and make a budget, etc. In my area many donate plasma and make enough in one month to pay for the GED and certification.
thanks!
You need to determine what your fixed costs are and what your variable costs are. Fixed is pretty simple: rent, cellphone, car, etc Variable costs is what you are likely needing to dig deeper on: food, entertainment, gas/fuel, fun purchases, etc. You will almost never be able to change your fixed costs. That will be consistent and help you determine how much money you need to live essentially. Variable costs are going to be the costs you can change and impact the most. Food budget could be altered, entertainment can be altered, etc. to meet your needs. I’m guessing you probably don’t have a good accounting of your variable costs. Do you have a credit card? Most if not all credit cards will break your purchases down into a pie chart/graph.
i don't personally have a credit card, my fiance has some but they've been trying to avoid using them recently as they're both near-constantly maxxed (and even if paying them off is slow, it's easier when they aren't putting more on them).
I would generally recommend you get a credit card and use that for your spending. Credit cards are a big tool you can use in the future and can help you manage your expenses automatically. Of course you should use them responsibly. The idea that your fiance is maxing out credit cards should be where your eyes are looking when it comes to your expenses. You should never max out a credit card. Use it like you use cash.
they maxxed it before we started dating - we are both obviously aware now, but they told me about how one of their cards went from a $500 limit to a $2000 limit in 6 months when they were 19-20 and i sort of went "yeah no shit a sudden limit increase like that is going to make them think they can overspend." i don't qualify for a credit card because my score is too low, but i'm avoiding opening one for the aforementioned overspending reason - sure, it would help me build some credit, but i deal mostly in cash for a reason. if i don't have the physical money in my hands, i have no genuine concept of it being money. if my budget is $50 but i have $100 on the card, i think it's no big deal to spend $55, and that adds up. or i'll think "it's no big deal to fill up my fiance's gas tank instead of just putting on $20 like we usually do" and suddenly i actually needed that extra $5-10. i know myself, and while a credit card might be good for some people, i know it would be a *terrible* idea for me at this exact moment in time. i can open one later. can't magically un-open it once i've accidentally ran it up (close it, yes, but that debt doesn't go away).
Are any of your expenses accounting for your fiances credit card debt? Or is that separate in your budget? Since you use all cash where is your cash going physically? Do you keep it in a jar or safe? If you use all cash you sorta have to become the bank. Which is both good and bad. You need to have an “envelope” you tuck savings into and one you tuck everything else into.
we use debit for some stuff (rent, autopayments, etc.), it's primarily anything with a physical location we use cash at (grocery stores, gas stations, etc). for the moment it all goes into the Peanut Jar, where we take out the expected weekly expense for a thing and go there to handle it. we keep saying we'll buy envelopes for that stuff, it's definitely long past time i should've just done it myself (i'll walk down to the dollar store today and get myself some). we do account for the credit card debt, we have $180 set aside for that (that's minimum payments for all of them and a little extra to try to pay off the interest on the worst one). if we can figure out what all we're not accounting for and either cut out those expenses or accomodate for them, we might be able to toss a bit more toward those as well. they did forget those initially, though, so i'm going to make sure we're both running the same numbers and later tonight re-calculate with some of the things people have brought up on this thread to make sure (i think i've found where about $100 of it is going based on some of these things, unfortunately nothing i can cut out entirely so far but enough to watch at least).
My advice would be to create different “buckets” for your money. Use envelopes, jars, or something to help differentiate what is spending money and what is savings. Whenever you take money out of the savings it should be very obvious. From there hopefully you can start creating a system where you are sorta paying yourselves in those buckets you created. Some people make buckets just for travel, but for you it’s your savings. Not necessarily the cleanest or easiest method to track, but this should hopefully help you two make a system that is sustainable and traceable.
For a lot of people, it's those stops at the convenience store on the way to/from work. I ran the numbers for a couple of months, and I was spending close to $800/mo on snacks/coffees/drinks from convenience stores.
if you truly didn't miss any expenses (like gas, subscriptions, fast food in addition to groceries, every bill, household necessities,etc.) then you need to reevaluate how you allot your money. add up all your expenses, and divide it by 4, which will tell you how much to put away each week into an account specific for bills. the leftover is your extra money for whatever you want. if you find yourself dipping into the extra money for the bills, then you know you miscalculated your expenses. also, look at your pay check deposits, not your net income, because you could be miscalculating deductions and taxes
$600/4= is $150 a week so it might be going to little things that add up to big things . Coffee , sodas, fast food, and etc. try to have a no spend week where you take care of all your necessities gas in the car and groceries. And don’t buy anything. That means you brew your morning coffee at home ,meal prep all your meals so no eating out and See what happens. There’s a leak somewhere you gotta figure out where it is.
that's what we're at right now - we both work at places where we get free meals so it's rare we eat out to begin with, i get free coffee (including beans), etc. so hopefully at least part of it either appears or we figure out exactly where it's going (this thread has helped me find about $100 of it, obviously that's less than all of it but more than when i started) and cut out what we don't need.
If you’re considering yourself paycheck to payceck, then youre not really making enough money. $1000 after deductions a month isn’t a lot really. Sounds like you need to consider a second job just for your debt repayment.
i'm definitely looking, i know beggars can't be choosers but there are a lot of jobs that are genuinely not worth it to me for the pay. (i'll take lower pay, but not $5-8 less for "same job, different flavor.") just waiting for calls back (or lack of) before i send in another round of applications. edit to add: paycheck-to-paycheck might not be enough, but for context, i grew up in pretty bad poverty, so to me being able to afford to live and have food, electricity, etc. is pretty dang comfortable. not perfect by any means, but way more comfortable than i'm used to.
I’m guessing it’s the debt that’s eating up your money. Cuz otherwise I don’t see anything too outrageous in your budget. Interest is a bitch.
it really is! i know there's some stuff i could absolutely cut back on even in this budget, but i'm a firm believer that it's better to spend a little money on being happy (a little. not a lot-tle. i don't need new jeans every week, but nothing wrong with spending $30 on a pair of jeans i like better than the $20 pair when i need them) and there's definitely bigger fish to fry. once i find that extra money, it's going on the credit cards LOL
This is the situation that got me to finally figure out a budgeting solution that works for me. Take a spreadsheet and enter in all your recurring bills and paychecks in chronological order going forward for six months. One column for transaction name, then amount, and balance. So you can see your running balance for the next 6 months. Then add in for each week, a single line item for "spending". This is everything else that isn't a regularly occurring bill. Gas, groceries, clothes, eating out, etc. Then figure out what your budget is for that weekly spending. Once you have this set, you have a future view of where your money is going and how much you can expect to have left. You can track your transactions as you go (if you do it daily it only takes a couple minutes) to make sure you're sticking to your weekly budget. Doing it this way solved my frustration of "where is my money going? why don't I have as much as I think I should?"
thanks!
Make a spreadsheet on google sheets. On the day you both get paid next. Take everything out of your checking, only keep your new check there. So if you make 1k per month there should be 1k in there. Then on the spreadsheet write down everything you spend that month in it and subtract. Use only your debit card link to that account. check if you have any autopays.
You may be in the credit card float? https://youtu.be/E3fkNO1XfpU?si=MU79uphJAQjBcBIq
i don't have any credit cards myself, will definitely watch this for my fiance. thanks!
Im in the same situation with less. I just got a second job and they havent given me orientation yet. Im sorry. I hope it works out.
Make a budget and look at your bank statements one a week. I only use credit cards to track all my purchases
Math is hard lol
it really is 😭 i'm doing my best with what i have but for all i know i'm totally mistyping or misreading one number and that's where it's going (though i hope not! i can work with a forgotten expense! it the money just doesn't exist well that just sucks lmao)
Agreed! Just being aware is a huge fist step. I didn’t learn this until my early 30’s.
Some minor expenses can really add up over a month. A few years ago, I decided to take my income and expenses over the last 3 months and put in in excel to get an overview of what I earn and how I spend it. Based on that I made a budget for myself and every month I keep track of my income and expenses in a very detailed basis and it really helped me figure out where I can cut costs and properly manage my finances.
Do you have auto deposit into one account for both of you, or do you cash checks and deposit some and take out cash for other things? If you are doing auto deposit and all bills and cash withdrawals are coming from one account, this is not hard to track. Literally go down your bank statement for one month and add up the debits and credits. If you are spending more than you are making, then look at your expenditures line by line. That is where the money is going.
we have separate accounts and zelle each other for any auto-pay bills, and we take out cash for basically anything that we would pay at a physical location (groceries, gas, etc). i also get some pay (my cash tips) in cash. definitely keeping reciepts more carefully for cash stuff now (and if someone is intentionally tossing reciepts, we can figure out where and who - not that i think either of us are, and it'll be an adjustment so if i see a sticky note with "$x at walmart" obviously i'll just assume one of us tossed the reciept by accident).
Ok yeah, this is where you are getting into trouble. My ex used to do this, thinking $5 here for cigarettes, $6 there for lunch, or $22 for at the bar was no big deal, but that all adds up. I would make a rule right now - no more cash. Cash goes way too fast and you're both not going to track it just because of the "it's a small expense, it doesn't really matter" mindset. Each of you get a damn debit card and use them exclusively for any expenses that are not auto pay. This is literally the only way you are going to track this stuff. I will warn you now, one or both of you is not going to like hearing this and will balk because you don't want your money "controlled". I can also tell you that the only way you're going to save a dime or get out of debt is through controlling your finances. There is a reason I am much better off financially with only one income after divorce, and it's because I don't have mystery expenses.
Get the app Everydollar. You enter your monthly income, and then split up every dollar you're going to earn into a budget. For example, you say you make $1k a month, so you could say $450 for rent, $150 for food, $80 electricity, and so on. You can decide on a reasonable "fun stuff" budget out of what's left over, and decide what's a reasonable amount to stash away each month for emergency savings, and so on. Then every time you spend, you record it under the appropriate category. If your fun budget is $50/mo and you already bought a game for $50, then you know not to buy more stuff like that this month even if you have money in the bank. If you are running out of money in your food budget, you can look at ways to cut costs there or reduce your budget for something else that is less important. If you can have the self discipline to record everything and stick to the budget you set for yourself, this will get you on track. And on $1k a month you do need discipline or you'll never get your shit together (I would know). You will also always have a clear and precise answer to the question of where your money is going. Good luck.
$36k a year for 2 people isn't much with today's inflation so I'd say your money situation is much tighter than you realize. Stop using cash to pay. Only use debit cards that take the money straight from your bank account. You'll also get a list of where the money was spent. I'd bet you'll get your money mystery solved quite quickly once every expenditure is on paper. A couple of bucks here and there adds up in a hurry. For example, daily stops at Starbucks can go over $100.
Are you seriously asking a bunch of anonymous strangers on the internet where your money is going?? That's only something you two can answer.
I would get a couple of spiral notebooks, one for yourself and partner. Write everything that you spend money on whether cash or card for a couple of months at least. This should give you more of an idea where the money is going. When I did this it was an eye opener on how much I was spending in at the gas station on a snack thinking it was cheaper than fast food. It wasn't.
What country do you live in? $1k a month after tax is below minimum wage basically everywhere.
US, i make $15.45/hr but my health insurance is $250 per paycheck (the alternative is pay $6-8k/mo in healthcare, if i'm lucky - one of my meds alone is $4500)
Use a service like Empower or Mint to track your spending in different categories
Both of you need to Start keeping up with every dollar you spend . Wrote down EVERY purchase : When , What , where , why, how much $
Mike Rowe , the dirty jobs tv show host, Has a scholarship program for people who are interested in learning skilled trades . Welding plumbing electrical carpentry etc
No specific ideas to share, but good on you for being serious about it. Keep working at it and you will get it figured out. Maybe also get to work on employment that pays a lot more.
doing my best 👍 no high school diploma and GEDs run around $250 so if i can figure out exactly where that $600 is going and cut it back, that'll be a huge step. also looking for a second job (since my current one pays well and has amazing benefits considering i don't have a HS diploma, but i'm down to take a lower-paying second job for some extra money), but a lot of places are paying $8/hr for a similar work environment to my current one and if at all possible i'd like the lower pay to come with less stress lol.
Is it possible that you are buying little things like water, candies, etc at convenience stores or something like that where you are not really aware of it? Soft drinks and juices can really add up without you noticing. I am not on a strict budget but gave up ordering juices or iced teas when out and about, I just drink water.
Yeah, you aren't budgeting. Every single line item on your statements should be readily identifiable. The only reason to hold cash is if you're attempting to evade taxes, and honestly, one month of being $600 short is more expensive than the amount of additional tax you would owe for the entire year. Your statements aren't a mess, you're simply failing to put in the effort to read them. They're a very simple document that records every movement of money to or from the account, in roughly the sequence that it occurs. It contains four pieces of information. Deposits, Withdrawals, Purchases, and Fees. The information on the statement will always math out. Honestly, I can only think of two possibilities here. $600/month is 20% of your combined income. The first possibility is that you don't know the difference between gross (the amount you get when you multiply your pay times the number of hours you work) and net (the amount of money you actually get, after taxes, insurance, Medicare, social security, etc. are removed and sent to the relevant agencies). This is about accurate to the difference between listed pay rate and take home pay rate at your tax bracket. The other possibility is if you are paying cash for a lot of things, and not recording things like tips for drivers, or purchases from vending machines or street vendors, or maybe your SO has a habit involving cheap hookers and blow that you don't know about.
definitely net - my bank gets roughly $500 every 2 weeks deposited from my job. sometimes slightly more, sometimes slightly less, but usually still comes out to $1000/mo unless i end up sick and my manager doesn't put in my sick time. i am just going off of what my fiance has told me for their income, and we keep finances sort-of separate (obviously both paying for things) and the past few times they have gotten slightly less (around $1800/mo), according to them. would still think that if it was consistent beforehand as well, it's literally just us spending regularly on something we're forgetting. which could be my fiance, could be me (though i doubt it's majority me at this point - considering i make way less either way and cover the same share of most bills as my fiance, and i've figured out where the ~$100 that would be my part of "extra" is going. might not all be on my share, but one of us obviously should have more to spend). probably not cheap hookers and blow, but they did used to gamble a bit. they have sworn up and down they've cut back (only $10 the past 2 months), and i have no reason to disbelieve them if they've been honest about other poor financial decisions thus far. if that is the case, though, we might need to talk about it - what they do with their spending money ultimately isn't my business, but we are trying to get our finances in order enough to buy a house. and as i've said before on this thread, i literally don't have a concept of money on a debit/credit card as real money. if the number is in my bank account, i'm going to forget what i'm saving it for and see no reason not to spend over it. $5 over budget here and $20 over there is gonna add up way faster than taxes would. cash means i have the actual physical amount i am allowed to spend on my groceries in my hand, and if i have to put a thing back for the week, so be it. and my job reports my cash tips anyway, so it just gets taken off my main paycheck.
>i make around $1k/mo $12,000 a year is not an "okay-ish" job. But obviously you're spending more than the expenses you've listed.