Budgeting

While looking for inspiration for the empty bedrooms in our house, the discussion of a nursery has come up more than once. However, in order to fill said nursery, we need to save up some money and set a household budget. If you're like me, you kind of guess how much you are spending each month, and pay things off as you can. We go out to eat a few times a week, and buy things for the house as we need them (what, a sweater is TOTALLY a household item!), and try to figure out where all of our extra money went at the end of the month. I tried making a spreadsheet, but since my husband and I just recently joined bank accounts, it was difficult to figure out who owed what, and how much extra we had, let alone figure out what we could save.

Enter www.mint.com. This website is SO cool! I've only spent a little over an hour on it so far, but the ability to enter as many bank accounts, credit cards, loans, etc as we need to so we can BOTH see what's happening is great! It also comes up with a budget for you and tells you when you go over. My favorite part so far (other than the fact that it said I was underbudget on my clothes allowance) is send me tips and tricks on how to save money and improve my credit score. I'm obsessed with this little app-and yep! it's available on smart phones, too!

There are a couple of other budgeting ideas I have seen that I like, but one in particular from todaysnest.com that I think would work great in conjunction with the wonderfulness of mint.com. For the full details (and printable envelopes), check out this link: http://www.todaysnest.com/todays-nest/2010/09/todays-money-budgeting-with-cash-envelopes.html

I'll post pictures of my envelopes once I print them out and get this started!