The Kitchen Book - Section Five

This section keeps our bank happy. And our utility companies. And those kinds of people.



It's essentially the following information in page protector:




I do most of the bill paying, so we decided we needed a back up in case Alex had to look after it.

We used to have a spreadsheet that went on and on and on for days. I got the initial spreadsheet from Crazy Aunt Purl (the link is about 3/4 of the way down the page) and it grew. And it grew. And then it became a mountain. And our finances were more of a mole hill. And who cares how much I spent on each trip to the grocery store in May.

Blah.

So I revamped our budgeting system.

We don't have a spreadsheet to track anymore.

We bank at a credit union that offers no-fee chequing and savings accounts. We can have as many as we want. We have two chequing accounts - one for groceries, cheques (we write, oh, fifteen a year, maybe) and pre-authorized debits, like car insurance and the other is just for mortgage payments.

We have close to seventy-five hundred savings accounts. Well, maybe 12, but still. This is the very best way we have found to budget. It's still being tweaked, but for now, it works.

We both have our pay direct deposited into the main chequing account. Every pay day (we're on different schedules) I do the big money transfer so that everything is where it's supposed to be. Some of the transfers are automatic - the mortgage payments and car insurance for instance (bills like car insurance stay in the savings account until they're due so we get a tiny bit of interest). Our grocery money is transferred in every two weeks. We do top it up if we need to, but it's discretionary - we might top up if something we use a lot is on sale or if I buy diapers for J - we have a separate budget for those, but I don't get the clerk to do two transactions at the store...that's just silly.

We can only access the main chequing account and one savings account using our cards. That savings account holds our entertainment money - when it's gone, it's gone. The best part about this system is that we do only have access to the two accounts unless we're using the online systems. It means we really have to think about most of our purchases.

We also both get a small amount transferred to our personal accounts each month - that way we don't have to check in if we want to buy something for ourselves (or each other), grab a coffee on the way to work, have lunch with a friend, whatever.

This works really well for us and our bank likes it too - the last time we were in for something, the man who helped us said he wished all of their customers would set up similar systems - it's a big help, especially for people who have trouble saving.

What budget system do you use? We're always trying to improve ours, so I'd love to hear about yours!