Budgeting

Recently in the Millionaire Money Mentors forums, there was a discussion on how people control their spending. One concept was mentioned over and over: Budgeting. Sweeping semantics like “budget” vs. “spending plan” vs. “spending goal” and so forth, most of the participants saw the value of being aware of planning at some level for spending. … Read more

Regain control of your financial transactions! Export all of them to a common spreadsheet with Tiller … Some of the biggest financial software companies do whatever they can to lock you in to using their products. I tried for a long time to get used to Quicken. I started and restarted several times at the … Read more

Here’s step by step how to budget almost entirely with pen and paper. We’ve stuck with it for years now … (This post was originally published on December 31, 2017, and was updated August 29, 2020). In the fall of 2017, my wife and I took Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University through our church. The … Read more

It’s good to take stock of things periodically. Here I compare our personal finance goals from six years ago, to today, and hit on the biggest game-changer: budgeting … Blogging has a lot of benefits. In one sense, it’s a public journal: a place to document what’s going on. The journaling part is valuable for … Read more

I wrote this post after we got our budget together for the sixth month in a row. (We’re now working on nearly two years as of 8/2019!) Here are a few budgeting lessons we’ve learned along the way … One practice we’ve continued after completing our journey through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University is monthly … Read more

When government shutdown looms, it pays for affected employees to be prepared for the worst … When government shutdown looms, a lot of things hang in the balance. If the government shuts down, various actions are triggered, including closing of national monuments and museums, suspension of non-essential services, and furlough of many government employees. Government … Read more

With zero-based budgeting, every dollar that’s spent or saved has a name. But when do you actually spend the money? I’ll explain 🙂 My wife and I went through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University over the past couple of months. We needed to hear what was in the program. We’re not in dire straits by … Read more