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Is your money gone before you've even cashed your paycheck? Are you eating Ramen for ten days so you can afford to pay the rent on the first of the month? Are you clueless about how much you spend on those nightly runs to the bar versus how much actually makes its way to groceries? Perhaps it's time you consider a budget. Whether it's your personal budget, the budget of federal government, or a budget for a non-profit organization, it is often essential to find a technique to ensure that income is being used most productively to deal with expenses. While we always hope that income exceeds expenses, there are periods of time where that may not be the case, but it is still useful to minimize losses and plan for the future. In periods of growth, ensuring that spare money isn't spent on pure frivolity can also be difficult without a budget. A successful budget should: Establish an expectation of income; and, plan for expenses. Having such a plan, it will be necessary to: Track those expenses; and, track 'account' balances. An account could be a physical savings or checking account, a jar into which you've saved grocery money, or a line in your ledger indicating that $100 of your savings is for buying movies. Given these general needs, creating and using a budget for the first time might require the following steps:
There are several different styles of savings and budgeting frequently recommended for those just getting started. Example: You earn $400 of net income every week of the year. Your rent is $500/mo, utilities (phone, electric, water, sewer, garbage) average $180/mo, and groceries are $300/mo but sometimes you buy in bulk and it costs a bit more. You also want to buy a new, $200 eBook reader, in four months. Let's start by reviewing some basic math: There are 12 months in a year (you knew that), 52 weeks in a year, so an average of 4.33333 weeks per month (52 divided by 12). Some months are "longer than others because they have five Fridays woo!" or something, but it's best to ignore that for now (unless you already have a bunch of money saved) and start with "four weeks per month". For rent, you need $125/wk ($500/4); utilities needs $45/wk; groceries $75/wk. Those are your generally-required expenses (though you could skimp on groceries if you needed to save a little extra). For your savings goal, you have one-third of a year, hence 17 weeks (52 times 4/12, rounded down). You need to save $12/wk (200 divided by 17, rounded up). Your weekly leftover will be $143. Now that you know how much to save, how do you do it? Technique 1: Envelopes, coffee cans, and jars, oh my! For each allowance or pay check, you take cash and stuff it into labeled containers and, when you need money for an expense, you only permit yourself to pilfer from the appropriate place. In the above example, create envelopes for Rent, Groceries, Utilities, eBook, and EverythingElse; each week, after cashing your check, place funds into each envelope ($125, 75, 45, 12, 143). At the beginning/end of each month, you pull the $500 to pay your rent. When you have a random bar run once a week, pull $20-40 from EverythingElse, and put the change back in that envelope at the end of the night. What happens when the envelope is empty? No. Bar. Run. When an envelope has extra, don't use it for other things. The only exception is the EverythingElse envelope, which might be used for emergencies. If your electric is due every two months, for example, the Utilities envelope might be empty if you started your savings plan on the "off month" (if so, get that money in that envelope as soon as possible and skip the bar this week!). Yay: It works. It's easy to check account balances. It develops will power. Bleh: It requires cash, but most people use plastic. It's difficult to "loan yourself money" --- if you need to steal $50 from EverythingElse for Rent that month that you are out of town and have to pay it early, you need to write up a little piece of paper that says "EE IOU $50, Love Rent". It suffers from round-off/partial-dollar issues --- keeping change in jars works better than an envelope, but you have to use the change in addition to the paper money. Technique 2: Ledgers Go get an account book, ledger, or lined portfolio. For each pay check direct deposited into your checking account, you divide the total income onto the various lines of the ledger. While your checking account shows the total ($400), you know how much is available for each item based on the balance in your ledger. When you go out to the bar, you know how much is available for 'entertainment' (from the EverythingElse line of your ledger); you either go to an ATM to extract cash, or monitoring your drink intake to ensure that you haven't over-spent when you use your debit card to pay the bill. Each month when you hand over your rent check, you subtract from the appropriate line of the ledger. Yay: It's better for electronic balances. It doesn't require Internet access nor entering data online. It's easy to check account balances. Some home finance ledgers already come with categories, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Others are simply lined pages, so you are free to handle more complicated arrangements of your money if necessary. People and businesses have been using these for centuries. Bleh: Basic addition and subtraction is required. It's easier to overspend if you don't pay attention. It's not tied to electronic bank accounts or Internet expense software. If your friends are hanging out at your place before you go to the bar, you have to look goony and check your ledger when you pick up your debit card. Technique 3: Internet Online banks often permit you to track expenses or subdivide your accounts for record-keeping purposes. If you can divvy up your income into sub-accounts, you can execute your budget and keep track of your savings. Some sites offer free services; others charge for membership. Frequent mention is given to mint.com for tracking your expenses. Goons have mentioned Splitwise and ClearCheckbook. You can always just start here. Yay: It's online! It might be tied to your bank accounts. It may automatically collect and categorize purchase information from your credit and debit cards. It might be easy to produce reports and six-month summaries. You may get graphs and charts that help you visualize spending and savings. Bleh: It's in the cloud. It might be tied to your bank accounts. You might have to authorize it to connect to your credit and debit cards. It might not be free or otherwise may flood you with advertising. It might be easy to overspend if you don't pay attention. You may have to enter certain receipts by hand. It may be too restricted for your needs (limited number of subdivisions, purchases tracked per month, limited history, etc.) Technique 4: Software Software companies still produce applications for use on a desktop computer, though it may be that the only "big name" remaining is Quicken. Many people create electronic ledgers with spreadsheets. Receiving many great reviews lately is YNAB, which will help you create and follow your first budget. A "small business" application may prove useful if you have an exceedingly complicated arrangement of accounts. Some of us use customized applications tied to databases. Yay: These tools will be the most powerful, in general, and can pretty much satisfy every need. They may permit a higher level of customization. Dealing with multiple accounts may be easier. Data entry, extraction, and modification may be easier in a desktop application than using an online interface. You don't have to wait for site outages or maintenance windows. Bleh: One application may not be sufficient; you may need several. Applications may not intercommunicate easily. They may not talk to free Internet applications. Advanced Budgeting 1: Yes. You are building a buffer. Stick to your plan, even if you notice extra money in the envelopes/sub-accounts. In fact, the above example has a built-in savings plan. You are saving $125/wk for rent, for 52 weeks; that's $6500. In twelve months, however, you've only spent $6000 ($500 times 12) on rent. You just saved up a whole month of rent! If you don't spend all your "extra" grocery money each month, the same thing will happen. When you go buy in bulk every three months, you'll probably spend a bit more, so you have to be saving at the same rate during the other two months. Just because there's money for groceries doesn't mean that it's time to go buy daily doughnuts; save that money for your crackers, rice, flour, sugar, beans, etc. You've seen the movies. Once you've saved sufficient funds to cover a full month's expenses in a single category, you can review your budget. In the example, saving $116/wk will cover your $6000/yr, but you'd be $36 shy every four-week month. Keeping an extra $36 in Rent might seem sufficient, but you want to build more savings; most recommend six months' worth. Advanced Budgeting 2: Priorities. Most will realize that basic bill payment is the first priority of the budget, but how do you handle everything else? One approach is to realize that you need to budget for some 'extras', those things that keep you happy and functioning like a human being, while staying cognizant of other potential uses of any spare money you may have. The priority of the categories may go something like this: Section 1. Bill payment minima Section 2. Basic extras Section 3. Depletions/Accumulations Section 4. Debt reduction, long term Section 5. Capital expenses Section 6. Boundary mismatch and inflation Section 7. Debt reduction exemplar and Investments Section 8. Extra purchases Section 9. Security First, ensure all bills are paid per period (typically include commuting fuel and parking here, as well as your yearly automobile tabs, phone, Internet, electric, and so forth). Second, add on some minimal extras to keep you sane (health care, one bar run each month, one book each month, one magazine subscription per year). Next, considering accumulating extra savings for important accounts (plan to save an extra month of rent and food over the next eight months, for example, but try to save equally for most of your Section 1 (S1) expenses). If you're already eight months ahead in a category, it might be time to budget less for that category each period so your savings are "depleting" back to the target buffer. Next, consider any long term debt reduction. This and Section 3 could be reversed depending on your debt to savings or debt to income ratio. Debt includes your student loans, which may permit you to send payments in advance so that you owe them no money for N months, which would help Section 3 and 4! Try to keep an appropriate target for your savings buffer (S3) so you can pay off your highest interest loans in a hurry; you want to avoid miniature emergencies where you have to keep carrying a balance on your credit cards. S5 generally includes long-term savings goals, such as items to be purchased over the next six months or more. The bulk of clothing likely goes into this category, as do extra car parts, electronics gadgets, that new television or stereo, and so forth. If you feel you will "just die without a new pair of $100 jeans every month", try to pace yourself by putting $35 in S2, and $65 in S5, to remind yourself that it's something you "want" or would "like to have", but it's ultimately not essential. In emergencies, S5 is forfeit first, followed the S3/S4; maybe a new pair of jeans every two months will be enough. S6 is for crazy people that realize things about money that you may not want to know. Boundary mismatch covers end-of-month or end-of-cycle imbalances that might occur due to the frequency with which you are paid. The $125 versus $116 in the above example is such a mismatch, and would also occur if you're paid every two weeks. Budgeting for inflation would provide additional savings for estimates in food, electric, or rent increases, for example, based on CPI numbers, or other sources of information. Such savings provide coverage for "re-budgeting mismatches": You have 6mo of rent saved, $3000, but your rent hops from $500/mo to $600/mo and suddenly you only have 5mo of rent saved; if you expect such a rent change to occur 24mo from now, you'll want to steadily increase your savings rate in the interim to "soften the blow". S7 appears when you have enough money left over to seriously consider investments as well as higher payoff rates to debt. Student loans through the federal government may charge such low interests that it's better to use your money elsewhere. If you can't live with that debt "hanging over your head", however, here's where you could get aggressive and pay triple or quadruple. This is a low priority because it's a form of 'luxury spending' and doesn't make much sense if you don't have buffer money saved. S8 might be viewed as a combined S2+S5 speed-savings account. If you get down this far and you still have money, then go ahead and save to buy that gadget in two months instead of three. Be aware that such budgeting requires more frequent reviews, so you may have to start considering how you balance your capital expense funds. If you have money leftover for this category, you're free to buy way too many movies, too many shoes, eat out too much, and otherwise fail those Seven Deadly Sin Avoidance courses. S9. It might seem odd that money for safety and "security" would appear last, but this category is truly here as a backup of the backup type of savings plan. You already saved "extra" money in Sections 2 through 8, so you should start by summarizing your effective savings rates. In a sense, review your budget at this point; make sure you are saving enough. Advanced Budgeting 3: Percentages. For each amount, x, on your budget with income I, record x/I*100% as the actual line item. Each time you are paid, simple multiplication will suffice to determine how much money is allocated to each account, so you can avoid having to remember what money goes to different places different weeks of the months. If you receive small bonuses or overtime hours as part of a paycheck, you can use the same percentages and don't need to waste time thinking about how to "use the extra money"; since a random 2% bonus hasn't changed your needs, it shouldn't change your budget either. Yay: Dealing with incoming money is really fast. It's very easy to identify savings ratios. It works well with periodic extra income. Bleh: Creating the budget requires an additional step. It's not ideal for a ledger if you have too many accounts. You have to ensure your software handles rounding appropriately. What's here? Have a budget? Share a budget. Need a budget? We'll try to help. Here are a few to get you started: DogsCantBudget July 7, 2013 POC July 4, 2013 POC June 19, 2013 (a 2006 budget) morcant June 4, 2013 Knyteguy May 18, 2013 DJCobol May 14, 2013 PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Jul 19, 2013 |
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May 14, 2013 04:42
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Briantist posted:A nitpick maybe, but YNAB should be under Technique 4 (Software), since it is an application you run on your computer... moana posted:I do this too, since I don't really give a poo poo about budgeting out for clothes... for people whose checking buffer is measured in the thousands, tracking a bunch of small expenses each month seems like more hassle than it's worth. pre:Forest Passes 0.25172% Entertainment 0.21198% Tires 0.21198% Annual Memberships 0.18548% Auto Registration 0.17223% License (5yr renewal) 0.01855% Indeed, though, as we have already seen with a few posts, one of the most important parts of a budget that I didn't mention: It's something like a mental game where you convince yourself to be responsible. If that takes a glob of monthly blow money so you don't swipe your credit card to the limit, so be it. If you have to be John D. Hackensacker III, someone here will approve. 
PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 00:58 on May 15, 2013 |
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May 15, 2013 00:53
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Briantist posted:it comes down to figuring out what works best for you, and not getting discouraged along the way I was amused by some of the comments customers left about the ledgers; it seems some people were having trouble determining basic categories, but printed ledgers already came with a list so the task was reduced to entering receipts. A goon friend in the past spent years talking about making a budget but never did due to what seemed to be an inability to get over the mental fence of recording the right amount of data; in that case, they wanted to divide food receipts into food, drinks, and tips. That's nice, but when you don't have a clue where the money goes at all, start with something easier; I'm not sure your average yearly tip rate really matters. The 'insane side' is where I fall, if there's a line here somewhere. I divide interest earnings into multiple categories and have calculated overall savings/loss due to the 9mils they charge on a gallon of fuel.  I will say, though, if you just moved from nothing to jars, you have my congratulations!bam thwok posted:I do this all the time in Mint. Most often for dates. I'll split the transaction my credit card throws at me into Restaurants and Drinking/Nightlife for my food and drinks, respectively, and "Entertainment" for her portion 
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May 15, 2013 22:27
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tuyop posted:Also, don't get me started on the bitchiness that is maintaining a cash account. I think I should really just count all cash as an expense in categories and move on. But then I don't track every cent!  and it's as good as gone. I guess I'm not enough of a  to carry a ledger around with me. Luca Pacioli would not be proud.
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May 31, 2013 11:11
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These are fairly close to what I can personally manage for cash as well. For cash received, I rarely need to deposit it anymore, but I do convert it in my records: It typically becomes "food money". Any ATM withdrawals either go to cash for food or for laundry. The laundry cash tends to become quarters, so it's very easy to keep that isolated, and the remaining cash is typically always for food and nothing else. I don't track individual food purchases made with cash, but at least all the change tends to get used as food money in the future. In the rare events that I've spent cash for something else, I've entered some minimal record for the sake of fairness to account balances.
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Jun 3, 2013 15:59
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morcant posted:I'm having trouble, though, in parting an Emergency Fund from a long-term, not-vacation fund. My current estimate is that I've got 6 or 7 months of cushion, which seems like a good amount to me. Beyond that, though, I'm not sure what to do. Instead, start with some estimates: Driving or flying? What are the current daily ticket prices? How much do you think you'll eat/drink in the park per day? If you'll be at a hotel, find some median prices online now. How much will you spend on souvenirs and/or gifts? Will you go out to eat each night? Get a total and see if it matches what people are saying online. Add 5-20%, divide by five, and that's how much you need to save for each of the next five months. Budget that amount into "vacation", and drop the rest in the emergency or capital expense fund. Check the personal finance thread for suggestions about better utility for the remaining money past your six-months' emergency fund (CDs, money markets, bonds, Roth, etc.)
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Jun 4, 2013 22:36
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Shadowhand00 posted:OP - you may also want to add the 4 rules of YNAB into the OP as well as the webinars they have available... I figured I'd give the thread a chance at infancy before I started the debate on this point so as to provide new readers a chance to grab some starter info before having to wade through pages of philosophical crap, but I'll have to say that I'll pass. We've already seen, in our mere two score posts, that there are different methodologies that are effective, and some will not work given people's circumstances or styles. Were I to build a section for budgeting philosophies, instead of basic techniques, I should want to at least attempt to be fair and thorough.To wit, here is "Part One" of some notions about your money: YNAB says: Give every dollar a job, Save for a rainy day, Roll with the punches, and Live on last month's income. (I'm not sure I even agree with the third). A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1845), by Catherine Esther Beecher, Chapter 16, might roughly be summarized as suggesting the following:
PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jun 5, 2013 |
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Jun 5, 2013 16:56
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Shadowhand00 posted:OP - you may also want to add the 4 rules of YNAB into the OP as well as the webinars they have available... And Part Two (of Two): Luca Pacioli, in Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalità (1494), contains the first codification of double-entry accounting, titled Particularis de Computis et Scripturis. While the audience was primarily merchants, it contains discussions of: Credits, debits, cash, capital, inventories, journals, ledgers, what we now call savings and checking accounts, loans, household expenses, keeping receipts and (bank) statements, how to keep a (running/checkbook) balance, and retention of records. Many of the discussions are pertinent to keeping records for the sake of budgets, but it's more of a general expectation than a specific chapter. Oeconomicus (c. 362 BCE), by Xenophon of Athens, starts with a dialogue about the economics of household management, and makes the following points:
Perhaps I should consolidate that to a few buzzwords and call it Xenophinance, but mantras really aren't my thing. I proffer that effective budgeting seems as much about proper and efficient use of money as it is about keeping records.
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Jun 6, 2013 02:35
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Shadowhand00 posted:I'm actually really enjoying reading through these things.... efficient use of money, clear record keeping, and finally, discipline to be responsible with your money. Feel free to read the primary sources and disagree with my summaries, but I did feel it better to post the walls of text in an attempt to clarify some of the authors' intents per seriatim. I think the discipline part is difficult for most people. All they have to do is find some structure and process where they constantly hear their mother's voice in their heads: "Now Phantom, if you buy that you won't have any money left when we go out for ice cream"; or their father's voice in their heads: "You waste your money on that and I'll beat you with it."
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Jun 6, 2013 04:57
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Briantist posted:Still, it can be a pain in the rear end because of differences on credit/debit cards between when the purchase was made, when it cleared, and which date the bank records as the transaction date. One of the benefits of having multiple, logical accounts (for the credit card and payment accounts as well as the food, movies, games, etc.) is that it brings you a bit closer to the notion that things can clear out of order. You can mark transactions from "food into CC1" cleared when they appear on the credit card bill, independently of clearing the transaction where you pay your bill. Don't worry, though, we won't call you insanely organized until you're using a complete, classical double-entry system for your budgeting and tracking. I just spent around two hours reconciling a gain/loss ledger over a matter of a 0.005% imbalance (addition fail), and had to split off journal entries, which had been improperly recorded into asset accounts instead of revenue accounts  in order to arrive at the correct profit.
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Jun 20, 2013 05:10
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signalnoise posted:Should I go with this plan of steady payments, or should I clear off my cards now and start saving from scratch? While we highly recommend having savings to pay six months of bills, I'm going to counter that a tad and recommend that your situation sounds better for a current target of two to four months, perhaps saving a higher amount for the car and student loan payments (as they tend to be larger monthly amounts). As you have housing covered, you could always cut out some of the extra food and bar expenses if money gets a bit more tight in the future. Depending on your payoff term and APR, then, dropping a significant chunk now may be a good move. You could also use or couple this with double/triple payments based on your spare banked cash, effectively burning through your savings over the next NN months, with the option to curtail if you needed more emergency money; obviously, that won't save you as much in the long term. This is also one of those annoying cases where a consolidation loan could be beneficial, particularly if the APR is significantly lower and you can guarantee that the credit cards won't be used once the balance is transferred off. (Of course, you have to justify/include the transfer expenses in your calculations, but yeah.) You might also consider writing up a boring little plan with the parents, particularly if they have more free cash with which they're willing to part, to have them pay off a large chunk and then you repay them at zero interest (and gift them the 1% "savings account" rates, for example), but that entirely depends on the relationship, trust, etc.
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Jun 20, 2013 06:05
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signalnoise posted:To be clearer it's about 2500 bucks of CC debt (significant to me anyway) and APR is 9%. I take home maybe 2300 a month after taxes, medical insurance etc.. My students loans I have to pay like 550 a month and car is 200. If I lived ridiculously lean I could probably kill the CC debt in a short period of time but I'm apparently loving terrible with money. With those numbers, though, you need to hold the savings (if it's only $3500). You're only losing around $20/mo with your CC balance, so dropping a chunk on it will help, but not compared to potential losses due to emergencies if you only had $1k in your savings account. Soooo... What about your budget prevents $400 to $600/mo going to the CC? What have I missed in my above estimates?  edit: In the interest of disclosure, and so you know I'm not entirely flapping my gums, I've played this game before. Here is 2006: pre:Rent $740 Consolidation $640 Govt St Loan $315 Prvt St Loan $290 Food $180 Gasoline $130 Insurance $100 Car payment $85 
PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jun 20, 2013 |
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Jun 20, 2013 07:27
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I'm curious if you have all provided this feedback directly to Mint. In my system, if something repeats, then it gets an account. For items that appear once and are savings goals, I have a list for Capital Expenses. As the list exists now exists, some repeat but variable savings goes in there as well (e.g., hiking equipment, for which I'll want to upgrade or replace, but it's a different item each time). It was quite some time, for example, before I actually created a line on the budget for clothing.
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Jun 28, 2013 02:52
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The other thing I'll point out, with which you need be a bit careful regarding the numbers, is that even an 8% student loan rate is generally going to be significantly better than any credit card you ever get. Ergo, you can "loan yourself money" at 8% interest by not paying double on the student loan each month, for example, and using it for automotive maintenance, home repair, etcetera. My highest-interest student loan is going to be done in September; after that, I'm reluctant to just throw all the money on the lower-interest loan because... 2.6% and I need to build up my Roth and repair some things on my Jeep (the toys go in a different category) and visit a doctor and... I'd rather take that at 2.6% effective interest than charging it on some stupid credit card. To follow the 'simple numbers' approach, if I have a minimum $100/mo payment, but actually have $200/mo that I can put toward it, do I use that spare $100 for that purpose or something else? If I need my exhaust manifold welded for $400-500, I can save my $100 for five months in my savings account, make my 0.75% stupid interest and be charged 2.6% for not paying off my loan. (Math is hard, it's about -1.85% per year.) Or I could pay extra on my loan for those five months, gain my 2.6% by lowering my interest amount, but then maybe get stuck with a broken exhaust manifold repair on a credit card at 16% (math hard about -13.4% per year) and where am I gonna get the money to pay that?... I'll probably decide after the repair to pilfer the extra $100/mo to pay off the credit card. It wasn't simple.  Also, there's compounding and loan lifetime hiding in here.Pay off loans, attacking the highest interest rates first, but not at the expense of having no money and carrying a credit card balance.
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Jun 28, 2013 22:49
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You have it all figured out! While I have only have Food and Entertainment, I generally only eat out two to four times a month, so I have no qualms about calling that "food". If I drink like a fish during such events, then I issue a credit from Entertainment to cover a goodly portion of the drinks. On the other hand, what tuyop has identified is essential to successful budgeting: When you are clearly overspending your goals, you need a separate category so you can track expenses or limit yourself on spending within that category. If concessions are reasonable parts of events, then the budget should allocate for more than just ticket costs into the Entertainment category. Indeed, were you to eat a pound of pasta before you went, you'd eat fewer concessions (and the whole health thing). On the other hand, if you go to a restaurant and then to the event, that's EatingOut for the former and Entertainment for the latter. It is impossible to overthink these things, I'm convinced. When you have a double-entry system for expenses coupled with your double-entry system for caloric intake, then we'll talk.
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Jun 29, 2013 22:28
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Oh friendly thread, we need more budgets! Think of all the college students away from their mommies, and the graduates out in the big old world all by themselves: Will they have money to eat if we don't reveal our secrets to them? Three pages; three budgets: morcant June 4, 2013, Knyteguy May 18, 2013, DJCobol May 14, 2013. Here is it, my January 2013 budget that shall be going away with the large student loan very soon now: pre:Item Desc Perc 0 Leftover Savings 4.95833 1 Monthly Rent 25.43190 3 Big Student Loan 21.78113 2 Food 12.21516 12 Capital Expenses 7.67886 5 Auto Maintenance 6.50503 25 Investment 3.70694 11 Living Expenses 2.64971 6 Govt Student Loan 2.42607 7 Phone 2.40779 4 Fuel 1.74454 8 Electric 1.58983 23 Parking 1.35135 9 Auto Insurance 1.31955 10 ISP 0.66243 20 Movies 0.52994 19 Bar supplies 0.52994 13 Renters Insurance 0.51892 17 Laundry 0.51669 14 Health Savings 0.42395 24 Forest Passes 0.25172 16 Entertainment 0.21198 21 Tires 0.21198 22 Annual Memberships 0.18548 15 Auto Registration 0.17223 18 CPL 0.01855 I'm still thinking about getting some graphs together to more effectively report on my adherence to the budget.
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Jul 5, 2013 05:37
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:... who the hell sends letters to anything for any reason. because screw those third party monopolies on eFiling and the IRS should reverse that underhanded deal and run their own API.Engineer Lenk posted:Are you saving for retirement, or is this out of take-home pay only?  I have to redistribute all those monies out of their crappy "High Expense Ratio Target Date" funds after finding time to read a bunch of prospectes as they doubtless don't offer the funds I chose with the previous provider.edit: * I just made up my mind because I remembered about the Traditional MAGI phaseout, and it's likely to be close enough that I really don't want to be dinking with all that just on the hope that the traditional has any better choices than I could get out of the Roth plus extra on the 401k. PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Jul 6, 2013 |
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Jul 6, 2013 03:30
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DogsCantBudget posted:Can BFC help me identify where the money is leaking out of our budget... First, you're leaking money everywhere, probably including some places that you haven't even imagined existing. Second, you're leaking money because what you have Isn't A Budget. What you have is a household inventory. You have identified your sources of income, your current capital, your periodic expenses, and your liabilities. What I do not see is an actual budget: You have no 'monthly plan for your income'. I expect the reason it feels like you're living paycheck to paycheck is because you don't know whether the money is there or not until you pay your bills, and the only certainty that you have is grounded in the huge chunk of change that you get as income each month. Here are some problems:
Don't have kids. Don't buy a house. Don't expect to retire. Those things aren't in this future, but the new one the kindly goons will give you. Please let us know where the new thread lives. Be aware that you'll probably get some similar attacks at the beginning but you'll want to plan to identify some small steps you can take to get on the corrective path. Likewise, don't overflow with so many 'new things' that you give up in two weeks because it's "too complicated".
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Jul 8, 2013 19:46
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Reading the recent push for YNAB stuff here and in DogsCantBudget's thread, I must say it seems like there's a great deal of  involved, enough so that each thing I read makes me a bit more concerned about the YNAB methods. What started off as a 'weird' feeling has been progressively turning into  or  or something. It still sounds reasonable for those just learning to budget, but I'm curious how long it takes for all the hidden caveats to become unnecessarily annoying. Do long term users of YNAB start looking for other solutions? What are the biggest limitations?Initial setup sounds like 'the worst', but it leads me to ask a dumb question: Why don't you just lie to the thing and claim your income is that much higher this month so you actually have food money, and balance that by lowering your savings? If you have $10k in savings and you "know" some of it is for food and StrangeExpenseThisMonthA and so forth, why not record $9k in the savings 'envelope' and just tell YNAB that you've already been paid $1k so, woohoo, we can stuff it into these budget accounts? What I do for budgeting became a bit easier to explain after reading some historical double-entry accounting stuff, and it sounds like YNAB has a flavour for some similar trickery. For example, it sounds like credit card balances need to be listed as "off budget accounts", whereas a monthly credit card payment (such as paying down a balance) would need to be listed as a separate account/category/whatever. Is that the YNAB way? If so, that's somewhat classic double-entry. I guess what I do for 'budgeting' is more 'transaction processing', which is single entry with the system enforcing the double-entry side of things. In that model, a budget is nothing more than 'apply a bunch of transactions at the given moment in time'. 
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Jul 15, 2013 17:52
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Of YNAB,tuyop posted:The whole point is not to do your budget a year in advance because your life will change and you need to roll with the punches. Sure you know your rent, but, yeah, you know your rent. Why do you have to enter it 12 months in advance? Yes, it is necessary to make adjustments, by I strongly advocate the saving of $125 each month to pay your six-month, $600 auto insurance bill. "$125?!  ", you say. "But of course, at that rate it takes you two years to save six month's ahead". Any adjustment necessarily occurs when you get your bill and find it to be $650. "Darn, so instead of being 1.5mo ahead, now I'm only 0.92mo ahead, and I should now budget $135.42/mo."How does YNAB handle slackers like me who 'balance their books' long past the transaction dates? While my records always match physical accounts, it's none of their concern if I have an uncleared transaction from Books to CreditCard1 from January. (I think the worst I remember is a clothing purchase that I entered 14 months afterwards; yeah, that was before I had a good plan for clothes purchases.)
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Jul 15, 2013 22:08
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Shadowhand00 posted:Eh, I'm just talking out of my rear end based on how I believe YNAB was actually developed. Its seems like they would use an agile framework for their software development - if that works for them, then it would make sense for them to think of budgeting in a very iterative way. Works for some people, doesn't work for others. Agile and waterfall project management frameworks still respond to change and adjustment. I was just speculating on how their build of the software was so tied to their specific budgeting philosophy.
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Jul 16, 2013 06:43
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I don't use YNAB, so I'm stuck going off information that's freely available online and information here. I guess I just don't understand this at all:tuyop posted:First, budget the money you have, not the money you will get. Of course you'll be -114k next August, you're planning on spending money that you don't have yet... It sounds like YNAB supports long term savings (this is not what it sounded like over the last week), but doesn't necessarily promote that approach (?). In any case, I'll take my confusion into the corner and sit for a while. I'm not buying the thing. It sounds like a good piece of the puzzle, appropriate in many cases, very different from Mint and other choices, and probably not for me. Maybe I'll manage to watch some of the video to see if that helps my comprehension. Otherwise, give it four weeks and we'll have forgotten YNAB because this place will be loaded with people excessively lauding Mint.
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Jul 17, 2013 23:01
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Having people here discoursing over tools does bring a lot of good things to light, particularly if we can be reminded of those special tricks we use to make our money work for us:Rurutia posted:(for instance, I can afford to just pay $500 for item X now and reap the benefits while paying myself back over Y time without jeopardizing my emergency fund, versus having the money slowly accumulate in my bank account and do nothing) I think it's fair that people are at different places. I have no particular troubles with Mint, YNAB, and friends, but I feel people here have pointed out limitations for their use, restrictions to their intent/methods, of failures to supply what's needed in certain cases. I outgrew Money, then Quicken, then spreadsheets many moons ago. I have something above 50 logical accounts that are active, spread among multiple physical accounts with different forms of split interest earning, and my base salary goes to nearly 30 of them. Maybe I should buy YNAB just to see it crash.  Briantist posted:I will say that YNAB does not handle slackers like you very well (I'm not sure of a system that does). If you don't enter your transactions, you aren't looking at a complete picture, so it's difficult to make budgeting decisions. This did make me think of a question earlier today, however, which is admittedly a bit relativistic. If you will admit a slight bit of absurdity: pre:2013-07-20 You have $1000 in your checking account. 2013-07-31 Purchase $1000 of gold (to be shipped) from some vendor. 2013-08-01 Credit card files transaction report. $0 balance. 2013-08-02 Vendor reserves gold, charges $1000 to CC company. 2013-08-03 CC verifies charge for $1000. 2013-08-04 Vendor ships gold via special shipping company. 2013-08-06 Gold arrives in armored vessel. 2013-08-10 CC bill received. $0. 2013-09-01 CC files transaction report. $1000 balance. 2013-09-10 CC bill received. $1000. Due by 9/25. 2013-09-20 Electronic check schedule with checking account, $1000 to CC. 2013-09-22 Electronic check reports as "In Progress" in checking account. 2013-09-24 Electronic check reports as "Cleared" in checking account. 2013-10-01 CC files transaction report. $0 balance. 2013-10-10 CC bill received. $0 due. Report shows "Payment received, Thank you" for 9/23. If everything was cash for trade, we could be reasonably certain of our balance. As we move to verifying receipts at the end of day, or entering items that a tool has "missed" at the end of the week, or dealing with balancing at the end of a ten-day vacation, we're necessarily running things as a debit to other of our accounts. I would hope that we budget for at least some of this, and how "tight" it is depends on one's buffer. This is OP "Section 6. Boundary mismatch and inflation". 
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Jul 18, 2013 03:55
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The latter portion of this was a response to Briantist, namely that entering a transaction immediately is pretty much impossible, reconciliation is required, and budgeting necessitates some thought about how much money you actually have to spend. One can create tricks with fluidity with spare money, but that becomes very difficult if a bank account total drops to nearly zero with every transaction.Briantist posted:I can't tell for sure but it sounds like you have actual separate accounts for what most people would just use a category in YNAB/Mint. I could see how that would complicate using YNAB since every time you "budget" for something it would also involve transfers. Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding you, and it's a difference in terms. I have a number of "accounts" which are logical containers with an explicit purpose (food, rent, tires). Accounts can have children --- or, thinking in the other direction, accounts are grouped into categories (living expenses, automotive). Those logical accounts are all necessarily a child of a physical account (savings1, checking1, savings2) and "balancing the books" means that the totals in my records match the physical account balances on record with those institutions. Indeed, then, I have lots of accounts, so it would takes lots of categories in YNAB/Mint, and many more than that if one stores rent money in multiple physical accounts, for example. A recorded "transaction" is money moving from one account to another. I do "single-entry bookkeeping" and the system enforces the double-entry side: One account is necessarily debited, the other credited, based on the amount in the transaction. Reports of account balances know how many transactions aren't yet cleared, so you get a cleared and uncleared balance for each. My budgets are effectively a plan for income. When I receive periodic income from an established source, that "budget" is application of percentages to create the transactions necessary to move the money from the creditor account (employer) into the 26 different receiving accounts (food, rent, tires, etc.). I've discussed percentage budgeting before, but I can process income rather instantly, even if it's a tad off from a "precise value" due to on-call bonuses and such, because it's just 25 multiplications (plus sending the leftover to 'savings'). No thought required, just "do the plan". I consider "budget" and "plan" to be synonymous. I have been using the same budget since January, and it probably took me an hour (because I redid the entire thing). quote:2 week hiatus... That's the longest I've gone so far without keeping up with things, and it was all fine, just took a little longer than usual. tuyop posted:It's that whole cash float concept right? entry for $1620, and the bank says you have $5000 in your account, all is well. You can move money between GH and HG all you like, and they won't be any wiser. Likewise, everything takes time to clear, so your personal records might take time to enter as well. The notion of "balancing the books" or "auditing the books" is based on that lag, namely that batch reconcilation of accounts can be done and may be more efficient. If I sit down and enter five receipts for gasoline, it's all copy/paste and changing a timestamp and value; there's no wasted time looking around for the right accounts five times over. Briantist posted:I dunno, I feel like that couldn't be his point because the concepts you're talking about are getting to be outside the scope of budgeting.  then we've got a lot of work to do. If people don't have the $500 needed to pay their credit card bill next month because they expected it to be on this month's bill but it hadn't posted yet and then they forgot to click the little button to save more than $500 to pay next month's bill  then we need to point them toward run-on-avoidance resources and help them improve their techniques for tracking expenses correctly. Let's not forget that some people use their tax refund money long before it arrives, and that could be a matter of weeks.Thanks for the links, tuyop and Nocheez. PhantomOfTheCopier fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Jul 19, 2013 |
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Jul 19, 2013 05:22
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tuyop posted:Man, you are very sophisticated in your budgeting.  Perhaps, but it doesn't mean I don't make mistakes or am otherwise lazy. Besides, accounts are pretty easy; for example:pre:Checking (4)
Automobile (15)
Gasoline (18) $332.924
Insurance (17) $97.169
Maintenance (19) $1036.721
Registration (67) $-52.593
Tires (66) $-40.338
Total $1373.883
Money Market (46)
Auto Insurance (50) $1145.935
Auto Maintenance (69) $2773.177
Auto Registration (70) $110.381
Gasoline (64) $2091.648
Tires (71) $629.131
My failure comes not from wasting money on frivolous spending, but on wasting potential earnings and putting my money to use. I have a good year's worth of salary saved up. Here's the rough budget and how many months ahead I've been: pre:Account Percent 2012-07-31 2013-07-26 Rent 21.70 11.21 13.00 Food 10.06 14.36 19.35 StudentLn1 7.78 2.34 0.57 lies StudentLn2 2.42 7.21 7.61 lies Fuel 2.27 28.49 29.65 Memberships 2.25 1.90 1.17 Phone 2.14 9.67 10.86 AutoMaint 1.90 17.19 46.58 AutoInsur 1.50 25.33 21.38 Electric 1.46 13.33 15.52 ISP 0.66 12.21 11.87 Movies 0.53 26.42 15.86 Liquor 0.53 38.62 33.90 LivingExp 0.53 14.33 34.77 RentInsur 0.52 21.83 19.56 Laundry 0.30 13.50 23.99 Health 0.29 59.41 73.07 Entertainment 0.21 -1.14 -24.03 AutoRegst 0.17 14.84 12.53 ForestPass 0.14 7.87 -1.93 Even with the Roth dumping, and maybe taking a long vacation if I switch jobs, the biggest remaining chunk is more retirement savings (which is not shown above). I do some, but I should work to "get ahead" as much as possible while I can, so I imagine my budget will go into "depletion mode" for a while to make up the difference. In the end, I don't think it's that difficult. Categories are little budget microcosms, so you might have food saved in multiple places (like three, haha), but it has given me better control over transferring funds in the past. I used to transfer into the money market after each paycheck back when I had a tighter budget, and transfer out before large purchases, but now it's kinda nice to have the buffer in savings since I might churn through $3k (and need to maintain a $1k minimum) while bills come and go and the paycheck waits until month end. I'm sure there are some ways to do this with cloudy software, but most of them would seem to take a great deal more typing and clicking around... and then I probably wouldn't do it.
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Jul 27, 2013 06:39
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tuyop posted:I really love that your money is tracked to the thousandth, Phantom. and budgeting percentages have five places after the decimal.Dantu posted:"Credit cards"... Keep two accounts in your spreadsheet that are used to pay the two cards. When you make a purchase on a card, record the transaction and move the money from the appropriate category (Food, fuel, etc.), into the CC payment account. In this way, when the bill comes, you will always have more in the CC payment account then the amount billed on the monthly statement, and you won't use that money for other purchases since your spreadsheet has it isolated for those payments.
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Jul 29, 2013 19:39
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KernelSlanders posted:Net worth shouldn't change in those transactions. The purchase creates an offsetting asset (the promise to deliver the gold, then the gold itself once it arrives) and liability (accounts payable). When you pay the credit card bill, you extinguish an offsetting asset (the cash) and liability the account payable charge. I'm not sure how YNAB works for asset accounting, but I'm pretty sure that's how you should book those transactions if you're doing double entry bookkeeping. Indeed, though, this is why I have credit card payment accounts, to represent assets that are tied up (then there's the issue of cleared versus uncleared), but it need not be as complicated as a double-entry system, in general. In fact, in what I'm using right now, a transaction clears; there is no method of temporal delay, so money transfers between accounts might look weird if one isn't careful.
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Jul 30, 2013 23:06
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Omne posted:So wait, when you just start a fresh, clean budget, you only put amounts in the budget line for stuff you would pay with the money currently in your account? Meaning, if I have bills I pay not with this paycheck but the next, I would leave those lines totally blank until I get paid again on the 15th? 100 HOGS AGREE posted:...only budget money you have.
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Aug 2, 2013 02:27
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thebushcommander posted:So I don't think I am using YNAB correctly... Dantu posted:... credit card spending... float. That's why cash is meaningless to me. Stack of $20s? Bam. Gone. It's all blow money if it's not tied to an account. (It's not that bad because I know to only keep cash for food or specific items.)
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Aug 7, 2013 23:17
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SiGmA_X posted:I kind of like what I'm seeing from Phantom which I gather is Excel generated. Mill and 5 decimals for fractions? That's some precision right there. So, how exactly are you going about tracking it in Excel? Were I to look at a spreadsheet model, I would say you need a combination of an "account ledger" together with the actual "monthly budget". The former must show an overview of account balances plus all transactions, and the latter must have the ability to display the transactions you need to apply a budget to incoming funds. A quick search yields a few shared items that might prove helpful, to the point of showing a proper account ledger (which may be a bit overkill as it actually has separation of credits and debits and is all double-entry-proper), and a general monthly budget spreadsheet. You can usually get away with multiple accounts per sheet (or one account per sheet if that's your whim), with the account name and overall balance at the top. Put all the transactions beneath that in reverse chronological order. To add a new transaction, insert a new row; all reasonable spreadsheets will automatically extend the accumulating functions so the balance will update correctly. Summarize across the sheets into an account overview, showing all balances (cleared and uncleared) for those accounts, and use another to construct your budget. Creating a "button" to automatically create the transactions when a "budget is applied to income" takes a bit more work and will depend on the spreadsheet software. Hence the reason I'm using a database as a backend for my tools. It's a bit more proper, enforces proper (monetary) transaction application, and it's a great deal faster to multiply a bunch of percentages by an amount and turn them into account transactions directly. I also get silly things like arbitrary SQL if I'm searching for strange patterns or whatnot.
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Aug 9, 2013 04:55
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thebushcommander posted:... I'll just need to track misc spending that pops up that I haven't thought of outside whats currently there if I decide to stick with YNAB and not go with a spreadsheet instead. Budget emergency savings of $1000/mo. Budget $200/mo for drinking liquor at bars. Budget $75/mo for buying games/toys/etc. Budget $75/mo for mini-vacations or a nice dinner or whatever. Budget $150/mo as random blow money. You should have very little money that isn't allocated for a specific purpose if you want to be a successful saver. As you're still analyzing your options for budgeting, so this next part isn't directed at you, but  I've been getting very concerned with how the word 'budget' has been used over the last couple of pages. For Americans, anyway --- I admit to zero knowledge of politics outside this country --- a budget is a forward-looking plan for income and expenses. People likely either have experience with smaller organizations (non-profits, church groups, Boy/Girl Scouts) or the federal budget. They know that a budget exists long before the money even appears in the coffers. Books for secretaries, treasurers, even introductory mathematics courses, speak of budgets in this way. A "balanced budget" for a non-profit requires that expected income match the planned expenses (usually annually). If you need a budget, you need a total plan; otherwise, I'm sorry, but it would seem there's only half of a budget.I have $183/mo allocated to "Budget Surplus" (effectively the emergency fund), plus $290/mo to capital expenses (televisions, major vehicle upgrades, computers, phones, toys), plus budgeted security savings in pretty much every category, so my effective savings rate falls in the 22-37% range (depending on if it's a Costco month, insurance month, etc.). I used this type of budget to make my money work well when I was getting out of debt, and I'm glad I did. It was much easier to quickly attack high-interest items because I always knew where the money was going, and I knew that I'd have the money to pay rent if I never touched that account when I went out to buy movies or whatever. It's a lot more difficult to "scrounge together $500" for some random b.s. purchase when you have to rape ten different accounts to make it happen. You need the money in the right place at the right time, or you're going to get stuck putting something on a credit card that shouldn't be there. Haphazardly clicking little up and down arrows like it's a game every fortnight seems like a surefire way to end up saying, "Oops, I guess pilfering that account last month for beer was a bad move because I forgot this bill is now due".
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Aug 9, 2013 05:25
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I have multiple physical accounts, yes, so I can still pay bills in an emergency (such as identity theft  ). I do not have seventy different physical accounts, however, but it would take "a lot of work" (mentally and emotionally) to empty out food, entertainment, movies, annual memberships, and forest passes for hiking, just to go buy a new car with cash, for example. Indeed, food savings is actually stored in multiple physical accounts, as are several other items. One physical account is good for paying bills; another is better for earning interest; the latter is therefore "deep savings" or "emergency savings".When I was unemployed for three months at the beginning of 2012, my weekly unemployment was enough to pay my basic bills plus a few bucks extra if I didn't drive much, so I just started by running things at a slight monthly loss. I didn't have to "rebalance" everything, but neither did I go out and spend all my spare book money on new books and such. I merely calculated nominal time to death on the accounts, ran the numbers with everything pooled together, and figured out where the 40% mark was so I had a target date for "starting to get more vicious with money" (like spending more time finding coupons, researching food banks, and making even longer term preparations). I'm employed now, of course, but I still have a few accounts running in depletion mode in my current budget; they are simply too far ahead, and that money can be better used for something else. Sadly, while several of the interfaces dump out HTML, I abandoned the web-based transaction entry system in favor of one that supported tab-completion for account selection and other nice things. I suppose there would be a few acceptable approaches to get reasonable functionality with a web-based system, but several other public projects have priority at this time. 26 monthly budget items going into a 78-line account overview, averaging 78 transactions a month so far this year.
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Aug 9, 2013 07:39
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:Yeah, I thought about doing that but a lot of times my uncle will give me like 80 bucks and send me to pick up a bunch of things for him, and I don't want his purchases mucking up my numbers for the stuff I buy because I want to track how much money I'm spending on myself because I'm still trying to figure out my monthly averages. So I just dump it all in the reimbursement category so I know this purchase was someone else's poo poo and it shouldn't affect my planning for next month. 1. I expect to withdraw $200 for "food money" (which, as cash, will last me for quite some time, but yeah). 2. My neighbor gives me $100 to order medical supplies online (he diabetic and nearly blind, for the drug lords here) 3. I order the supplies on the credit card. $100 to keep it simple. 4. $100 transaction from (uncategorized) Savings to CC payment account. 5. $100 transaction from Food to Savings (cash from John Doe). 6. The cash in my hands is now Food money.  7. I can either withdraw $100 from an ATM, or wait a few weeks since I really don't need it for a while. When it comes time to run numbers, savings has a net change of $0 from these transactions, and the Food account shows a $100 outflow. Everything is proper for reporting purposes.
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Aug 23, 2013 04:04
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Kenny Rogers posted:Yes, but I'm super-aggressively paying down debt, and pulling from my buffer if I go over is (at this point) a better option than doing what I was doing last winter - I'd pay $350 down on the Barclay Card, run out of money the Tuesday before payday, then charge lunch and a tank of gas, eating up almost 1/3 of the progress I'd made for the month. If you have an emergency buffer, it should be untouchable except in actual emergencies. In the situation you describe, a pile of blow money seems... unnecessary, as it does not contribute to your personal goals for savings and net worth. Kenny Rogers posted:Mint... We get a smattering of everyone here trying to "plan ahead" at least a little bit, or trying to figure out how to do that (Mint counts because how you have spent your money is an integral part of figuring out what is reasonable to spend in the future). We accept users of jars, envelopes, classic ledgers, stacks of monopoly money or poker chips representing your checking account, whatever might allow you to forecast, allocate, track, and prevent over-spending. 
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Aug 27, 2013 22:54
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You know, you can budget with a piece of paper and a pencil for gently caress's sake. At least 40% of posts in the previous two pages were about trying to get YNAB to work.  Anyone who reads the last ten posts of any page in this thread should know of the obsession with it.Maybe we should try to be a bit less addictive and a bit more engaging. Ya know, something like, "Well poop, DirtyTalk, that sucks. Was there a specific area where you know you overspent, or was it just a bunch of money blowing out the windows and such? It's typically easiest to reign in spending by identifying your largest frivolous expenses and then setting a limit for yourself each month. Do you have credit card statements that might reveal some of your expenses from the summer (many CC companies shows categories of expenses online), or any records that might help you create a plan for the next few months?" Lucky for all of you this should be the last post on the page, so it will soon be forgotten and we'll be back to the steady increase in our YNAB monopoly.
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Aug 29, 2013 23:31
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DirtyTalk posted:I don't really like Mint. Idk why but it never seemed to do it for me. It is way too convoluted in my opinion. Another thing for the thread to remember, just because A, B, and C didn't make sense at some point in the last ten years doesn't mean they won't make sense knowing what you now know.
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Aug 30, 2013 22:44
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Kenny Rogers posted:... budgeting $1002 for rent in May - even though I wouldn't actually pay that until the 29th. Then I got paid in early July, and so my budget looks like I didn't pay rent in June - because I paid rent FOR June, but not IN June. It looks wonky as hell, and makes my brain hurt...  Yeah. What is this, the dating game? This reminds me of a goony friend who used to send money to the credit card company every few weeks based on his pay checks coming in and, if I recall correctly, some of the leftovers after things like rent and such were paid. This might seem fine in practice because "when the other routine bills are paid there's always leftover", and it was until his notions of reality failed to match the credit card company's and he ended up missing a payment, whereafter followed the penalties and realization that you pay things with money that you have on a schedule for a reason. Every couple of pages in this thread, after people have been going on for a few days trying to clarify something about YNAB, it starts to look like it might actually make sense. Then someone picks up a basket, walks into the bank, and dumps a bunch of fish onto the counter, and I again realize that it just about flopping around like fish hoping you end up in the water.On the other hand, I said to find your strengths and use them to budget, so if you're good at playing computer games...
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Aug 31, 2013 04:30
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DirtyTalk posted:I really like step by step instructions for things...
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Sep 3, 2013 22:54
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UnhealthyJoe posted:Private Student Loan Monthly $185.55 $185.55
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Oct 10, 2013 00:45
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tuyop posted:...I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a day off to spend with my partner every month than a loving pizza. A pizza-focused individual might consider budgeting as:
If that's too simple, go read Luca Pacioli's book on double-entry bookkeeping. Money happens to be a (generally) compact and standardized way to make purchases, but it's not required. If your landlord expects you to give them one pizza Sunday through Friday evening, you have no pizza except the four you carry home from work Friday, and you pay the grocer their weekly pizza on the way home, then you won't be able to "pay your rent" Sunday evening unless you skip eating (your daily pizza) over the weekend.
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Oct 27, 2013 17:01
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