Create a budget

Insurance. About $90 a month—not much, but enough to make a difference.

I’ve got it figured out now, so next comes the hard part—setting things up so that it gets “enforced”. I figure the best way to handle this is to set up a bunch of automatic payments—for rent (already taken care of), insurance (ditto), credit cards, car loan, and savings. Since all of these things are fixed amounts, I can dump a total fixed amount into one account for them from my paycheck, then have the remainder go into another account for “variable” monthly costs.

At least that’s the theory…

OK, took a quick shot at putting together a budget based on a quick glance at the breakdown I’d done earlier. Apparently, I either spend every dime I make (and a little bit more—like $15 over a month), or I’m up $600… So why am I slipping farther and farther into debt every month? I think I left something out. So much for throwing a budget together in 15 minutes. ;)

... figure out where I spend my money. Thankfully, this is pretty easy for me, since I use an Amex card for pretty much everything. One quick visit to their website later, and I’ve got a .csv file with all the transactions I’ve made in the past six months! All 248 of ‘em. D:

Next up was to load them into Access, then categorize them. I came up with about 18 different categories.

Then a quick aggregate query told me all the bad news. I broke down my expenses by category & month, and summed them up. I spend more on gas & groceries than I thought (about $300 & $400 a month, respectively)... I’ve got a lot of areas I can cut back in, and that’s a great thing.

Now that I know where I spend my money, I can set up a budget.

Figure out what I spend my money on every month. That’s easy—three checking account statements & three amex statements (my “daily spender” card). Ugh. I probably don’t want to think about how much I spend on eating out…