Managing Our Budget

I get a lot of questions about budgets, in particular how we manage ours, and so I thought that it would be helpful, especially to new readers, if I did a (new) post on it. Regular readers may notice that we're changing the way we do it slightly - no more cash jars (yikes!).

Account set up:

Personal checking | Joint checking | Personal checking

Personal E-saver| Travel Fund | Personal E-saver

Gift and Mini E-Fund
Moving Abroad Fund
Emergency Fund

• Both checking accounts get funded with wages - mine weekly, hubby monthly (on the 20th), we then have (weekly/monthly) automatic transfers set to fund the joint account. The transfers are all of our respective salaries minus our £80 personal spending allowances. We both have the same allowance.
• We also both have an e-saver attached to our personal checking accounts - the travel fund and gift/mini e-funds are attached to the joint checking.
• Our long term emergency fund is kept in an ISA and our moving abroad funds are kept in a separate ISA.

From the checking account we then pay the bills and fund our savings....mainly with automatic payments.

• Bills: All our automatic payments (Direct Debits) are set to be paid between the 25th and 1st of every month and are, where possible, the paper free kind.
• Savings: Are part automatic payments, part manual transfers, this way I can adjust the amounts when needed.
• Grocery: Paid for on a cash back credit card except farm shop visits, where cash is used. 

And the actual budget..

• Budget System: We use a zero based budget system which means that every penny is allocated, every month.
• Extra Income: Any extra income gets directed to one of our savings goals.

I hope that this covers everything, however if you have any questions at all then please ask me either in the comments or by email nomorespending (at) gmail (dot) com