honestly, super curious. i don't know if i put this in the correct forum, so please move if needed. ❤

anyways, i'm new to the world of budgeting - including being more frugal, paying off debt (i'm down to $1.4k on a single budget, proud of myself!) the only problem is that i am a bit of a shopaholic, self proclaimed, and working on it..

i've also recently started planning. are there any of you who are into this kind of stuff as well? my significant other is not very much into it and it's more of a guilty pleasure for myself.

i would love to hear your stories about being frugal, meal planning, budgeting or planning in general!

Well aren't you responsible :D Congratulations of paying off your bills!

I loved budgeting when I felt on top of it, but lately I've been falling off from moving and buying a car (and insurance) at the same time. It's hard to break even when I have little bursts of shopaholism in my blood. And now I kind of dread doing the math for that reason. Sometimes calculating bills feels like - 40% for you, 40% for you, 10% for you, 8% for you, and 1.5% for you! That leaves me with..... oh.

I guess some really great advice I've learned in the past are: -spend good money on few good clothes that will last years rather than many cheap ones -cook at home and be flexible with what you have. Rice and oatmeal go well with almost everything. Learn to store your different vegetables. -keep hunger down by laying off the sweets

I am more interested in hearing what you have learned or heard so far. :)

- yup, yup! I have some life goals I'm currently working on. I paid off my student loan earlier this year and now that I don't have that monthly bill hanging over my head anymore and I saved up a bunch, I am now currently in the process of completing my next goal which is to buy a condo. I've been thinking about doing this for the past three years instead of renting. The search...is going to take a few months. I'm on month 2 and the market is dead and screwed up...

But this past year I learned a lot about credit, budgeting and saving. I got one of those cash back credit cards. Having a credit card apparently is the way to boost your credit. With the cash back credits I have bought a new cell phone and paid for some of my online purchases. It's nice to be rewarded when you pay your bills I guess.

I am a shopper and I have been trying to slow myself down this past year because I have been trying to really save up for moving. I try to buy things on sale. I am a sale rack hunter. I have lost that appeal to buy things at full price because I know that products don't really cost the full retail price. About being frugal clothes wise - lately I have been patching up some of my worn out clothes instead of tossing them right away.

I gave up buying shampoos and makeup for a good part of this year because I am trying to use up what I have. I learned that bar soaps last longer than liquid soaps. :p

I only allow myself to eat out for lunch during the week ONCE. I pack a lunch all other days. I figured out how to just buy a bunch of items to last over the week. It gets repetitive and boring to eat the same thing. IDK how meal planning is going to go when I'm on my own. I just know I need to figure out a way to not cook every night. I hate cooking, but like good food. I'm thinking I would maybe cook a meal every other night that last two days.

this post resonates with me on a very spiritual level. I love the act of budgeting and planning, so much so that I have amassed a museum's worth of office supplies. 😇 Sadly, my debt is much higher than yours as I am currently a student. I am still living in that fantasy world where future me is responsible for the debt and surely my chosen profession will assist in repayment.......................surely.... I also love how such a responsible task is considered a guilty pleasure hehe

I used to have a bunch of disordered eating, but I morphed the mindset to become a superpower. Sometimes I am a bit bad at implementing my plans, but it is getting better. I am studying to become a nutritionist, so one day my life will consist of nothing but planning! I've noticed that I enjoy planning in notebooks with graph paper instead of lined. When I was in the seventh grade, we had pen pals from France and everyone wrote their letters on graph paper - - something I had never seen before!! I have since understood the appeal; keeps everything tidy.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on the front of "rice and oatmeal go with everything." I eat only plants (fungi and nuts/seeds ok too) and people look at me crazy when I tell them my diet. I enjoy it, and it all came from a time when I was very down on my luck with my finances.

Ahhh!! Congratulations on conquering your student loans!! It gives me hope for my future :bowtie: It resonates with me when you speak about being a shopper... I totally understand. It's ridiculous how much things are marked up! I get needing to make a profit (I suppose, I could get into a real political discussion right now but I wont 😈) but sheesh, some things are absolutely absurd. I will say re: your bar soap comment, I bought a liquid bottle of soap from Shea Naturals and it lasted me 13 months. Color me impressed, for sure.

I'm not great with budgeting but I am into planning and keep a personal planner. :) It's a Kikk.K ! Best okanner I've ever had, it holds up so well and I just order new inserts every year. I'm super into decorating it with stickers and washi tape lol.

i'm trying to get into planning. i'm super bad at it so now i bought a planner and a bullet journal in the hopes of being able to restructure my life or something. but then i get stressed, stop for a while, and lose all sight. :')

budgetting - not so much. i literally have no income right now so bills are piling up so i put them all in a box and don't look at them bc i'd freak.

I have a weekly budget set out until next year!! My husband and I are both on fixed salaries so that makes it a bit easier. We're trying to pay off our existing debt so that when the kid starts school, we'll be debt free (excluding our mortgage of course).

We are both terrible shoppers lol, so that's our biggest weakness.

I love the act of budgeting though, it's quite calming and satisfying!

I spent a year trying to keep a bullet journal and have realised that it’s just not for me. (I couldn’t deal with having my collection pages in the middle of weekly pages!) I’ve gone back to using a planner and love it. I can spend hours on instagram and Etsy browsing washi tapes and other cute decorative stuff!

This is very much my guilty pleasure too!

another Kikki k fan here! I love the planners, so soft and gorgeous!

They aaarreee. c: And so versatile.

I love to sit down and make a budget! I will do it just for fun at work, I will make budgets, shopping lists, any sort of list...It is actually fun and time consuming. If I have a really nice pen or pretty new paper, I will go out of my way to make a new budget or plan something. I am not really big on using my phone to keep budgets, more old school and like it all to be on paper. I have a daily planner that I love to write in and decorate too! Funny to see there are others who have a similar guilty pleasure =D

First, congrats on paying down your debt. That's a massive win! <3

We try to budget and do the same, but we do art full time for a living? So, it's nearly impossible to determine how much money we'll have on any given day. All I know is that I would fail miserably to do any budgeting/planning at all if not for Trello. It's a list making site (if you've never heard of it), and I actually think I'd be lost if mine ever disappeared. It has really helped us to do our best with our circumstances.

this thread gives me hope that i'll be able to manage my own finances when i move out! for the time being, i scratch my micromanaging itch with the Fire Emblem video game series. if you enjoy budgeting and planning, you might enjoy those games as well! it's a tactical RPG series with lots of forethought required, which units need to level up, whose weapons have low charge and will break so they need to be replaced, all kinds of that good stuff.

Ugh, it's December, the month any spending control goes out the window (for people like me at least).

Lately I've been undercalculating how much I make and spending more than I budget for, and somehow have been coming up perfectly even. Little things keep coming up though, like a dental visit, shots, a car tune-up.

That's awesome that you do art for a living. How do you like it compared to working for others? Were you able to slip into it gradually, or was it more of a "jump?" Asking because that is my dream - though I know everyone is different!

I'm going to message it to you privately, as it got a bit lengthy and off-topic lol

If anyone else wants to read the response, let me know and I'll send it along to you as well <3

I'm the king of budgeting, and have been doing so for the last 20 years or so (I'm also an accountant, so it's natural for me to do it). I have a very elaborate budgeting spreadsheet created that I reference daily. I also have two separate checking accounts - one I call my 'holding' account that all my automatic payments come out of that I don't touch at all, and my 'spending' account that contains only spending money. That way, I can tell at a glance how much I have to spend; I never have to calculate how much is left to come out, or worry about spending too much and then having a payment bounce. Once the money in the spending account is gone, that's it until payday (although most of the time, I never reach zero - I've learned to be frugal when need be).

I used to use a physical planner, but it became a bit tedious to drag it around as well as a laptop, file folders, etc, and there was also a chance I'd forget the planner in my morning rush (and then my entire day would be screwed up) so I went electronic. My current go-to is ticktick.com because you can categorize everything and enter recurring stuff, as well as simplenote.com for basic notes. Granted, if the internet ever goes down, I'll be totally screwed. :D

Budgeting is really therapeutic for me as long as it's working haha. I love allocating my money to different areas and working really hard to stay within budget. It's not so fun when I get to the end of the month and realize I spent waaaaay too much money in one area. My problem is that I'm not very good at planning, and I go into the money thinking everything should be squared up, and then I remember I have three birthdays and a grad party to go to!

I also prefer pen and paper. There's just something sooo satisfying about writing it down with a nice pen and then checking off a physical list. I just bought a new planner for the new year and I'm so excited, it has different gardening tips for each month and beautiful artwork. I'm a big gardener and I also work on a farm so it ties everything together for me!

i'm poor as hades myself so i coupon and bargain hunt like crazy so yeah i get it

I am somewhat new to this world as well and have been being more frugal, especially when it comes to gifting. I've started making a lot of things myself whereas I used to just buy EVERYTHING. Hoping to pay off some medical bills through frugality/budgeting.

I too started a couple of months ago, after reading a blog post about the Franklin Covey system by a friend-of-a-friend. I was intrigued about how much planning evolved from the original 'appointment calendar & address book' variety! 😄 Way back when I started working full time in the business world, I had one of those small Dayrunner binders but hardly used it. Well, recently I've been struggling with managing some personal projects AND keeping on top of regular stuff, and it seemed like this "new" method would help. I also found that the old compact size I used before was just too small. The half-letter size wound up to be perfect because I use that size for scrap paper! LOL I'm not into the decorating part, but I did make some dividers so it wasn't so plain to look at.

I do prefer paper systems too. The only thing I "plan" electronically is my finances, probably because I'm so used to doing it that way for work. (Hello fellow accountant !) I use a program called KMyMoney because I can get really detailed on my spending and the reports are customizable. I'm still settling on my planning system as a whole-- I have my main planner (the FC Classic binder) pretty much set up, but I'm also working on putting together a household management binder and another relating to finance stuff that I certainly don't want to be carrying around with me. Oh, I have converted my shopping lists to my phone so I don't waste paper or lose them (done that plenty of times 😓).

I can't add much more to the budgeting tips, but I've found that paying cash for everyday stuff puts a visual on how much is reasonable to spend and also making an inventory of my stuff pretty much curbs me from impulse buying (ie. I have too much stuff as it is!).

Once the husband and I move out on our own again, I'm going to be fully into budgeting properly, and making a spreadsheet and things so I can keep track of everything. We have so much we wanna do, but we're rubbish with money.