Budgets reduce clutter

I've been taking a real interest lately in reading up on decluttering and simplifying my life and came to a rather obvious realization: budgets are a huge aid in simplifying life and keeping it from getting too cluttered with a bunch of junk.

Try this experiment: go to Wal-Mart twice. Once with no idea how much you can spend. Once with a budget meaning you will be limited to a certain amount of money for certain categories. If you are limited to $80 in fun money for the month, you'll be a lot less likely to buy that $15 movie you may or may not watch more than once. You'll rent it instead for $1 from RedBox or $3 from Blockbuster. Or maybe even NetFlix.

Zero-Based budget spreadsheet

I've decided to go ahead and share the Zero-Based Budget spreadsheet that I've been using to set up my budget every month. This spreadsheet will work with NeoOffice, OpenOffice, and anything that can read/write Microsoft Excel files.

I actually prefer to call it a Cashflow Plan. "Budget" sounds like you have to pay your bills, pay down your debt, and then you've got $5 to last you the month. Cashflow plan (and Zero-based budget) means you figure out how much money you have coming in and you decide how you are going to use each and every dollar.

So far, I haven't found any personal finance program that does a good job at budgeting. MoneyDance does a great job at everything else. So I create my budget for the month with this spreadsheet and then put the final numbers into MoneyDance so I can track how my spending stacks up against the budget.

emergency crash mode budget

Here we go again... I am once more in the land of the job hunters. It is a bit different this time. I saw it coming and saved up some cash. This would be the first time I've had more than a 5 second warning that employment problems were coming.

My current routine for the day: in the morning I apply for at least two jobs, clean a bit, eat lunch and then exercise. In the afternoon, I do some reading and work on some ideas that could earn some extra cash. Right now it is more working on coming up with ideas than actually doing them.

There's a neighborhood garage sale coming up in mid-August. We'll see how much junk we can sell.

I'm planning on using Dave Ramsey's Irregular Income Planning form available here to budget until I get another steady job. I'll have a spreadsheet version of that form up at the beginning of August, if not sooner.