The website that saved my marriage
OK, so it wasn’t really in trouble to begin with. I just like catchy headlines.
Like a lot of couples, though, money and decisions about how it is spent or saved is a tough area. I originally signed up for PearBudget, the web-based expense-tracking and budgeting tool when we first moved back to the States. But, it’s only been in the last month that we’ve been consistent about using it to track all of our receipts and income.
For some reason, it is tons easier for me to use than stand-alone programs like Quicken. It’s very easy to edit categories and other information. You can budget for both monthly and irregular expenses, and you can easily see where you are in relation to your monthly plan at a gance. We’ve really been able to see where our money is going and set realistic goals for budgeting and saving. I think we were both surprised that the areas we thought we were wasting money weren’t so bad, but we have problems in areas we thought were a non-issue. For example, we really don’t eat out very much, but we do spend way too much on groceries for a family of three. (The cats eat cheap.) I attribute this to my love of trying new recipes, which has resulted in a cabinet full of rather exotic herbs and spices, and jars of various international condiments in the fridge. We’re prioritizing meal planning and sale shopping this month to see what we can do in that area.
I really liked this post from Small Notebook on what to do with a budget once you’ve got one. Rather than feeling constrained by ours, I feel it makes us both feel more in control and better able to talk about what we want and how to get there than we were before.
Kay and I are doing something similar. We have been using mint.com and loving it! It downloads all transactions from all your different accounts and 95%+ of the time it accurately categorizes them. They have several nice planning and budgeting tools built in.
As of now I have totally stopped using Quicken.
Yea, what Jay said. Additionally, I’m trying to find ways to spice up our menu, but cut the grocery budget as well… not easily done.
Friends of ours have had a good experience with using the website Relish for meal planning. It’s a subscription service but it sends you recipes and lets you choose from those suggestions or others in their database, and builds a weekly shopping list from just the food that you need to make those. I’ve heard that it cuts down on unused food and helps reduce expenses by better planning.
We’re going to try to go it alone at first, but we may give that a try next month, if we don’t make progress.
It’s always so revealing to look at the numbers in a budget rather than guessing. I thought we were spending more on lunches out, but then the numbers showed it wasn’t as bad as I thought. The groceries, though, oh goodness.