I HATE BUDGETING!

Posted by nate
February 18, 2009

That is right.  I hate saving receipts, plugging in data and making sure I don’t spend over my budget, which I always seem to do.  The challenge is that I want to save money and not just go on a spending spree!

Well, for the past year, I have used mint.com and it has helped me get a handle on where all that money is going.

The first thing I did was enter in all my bank and credit card information.  Mint downloaded my statements and then keeps a tally on what I spend and where I spend it.  It will automatically categorize things it recognizes, like when I take the family to McDonalds, it will take that charge on my card and put it in the “Fast Food” category.   The only time it doesn’t track my spending is when I use cash, but it will track when I take money out of the bank.  Not a big deal since I use debit card for most of my purchases.

How Does This Help Me?

Every so often I log into Mint and see what I’m spending money on.  I can set up a budget limit on what I want to spend and Mint will let me know when I’m coming close or over that limit.  I can also look at previous months and see where most of my money has gone and where I might be able to cut back.

Example of an American grocery store aisle.
Image via Wikipedia

What surprised me was how much we were spending at the grocery store and on entertainment.  It wasn’t the planned trips that we would make to buy food for meals, but the unplanned trips to buy quick items.  It was $5 here and $20 there that added up to over $300 one month!  We also had been going out to eat and to the movies more than we thought, totaling about $200 to $300 additional a month.

Wow!  it was quite an eye opener.  When we recently looked at our finances… we discovered that through our efforts to cut costs, we were able to trim our grocery bill in about half (from $600 to $300) and bring our entertainment down (from $200 to about $50).  Funny thing is we don’t really notice the difference :).

Except for occasionally logging into mint, there is really nothing more that I have to do… and I like that :).

What are ways that you make “budgeting” tolerable?

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