Great job creating that budget rough draft last week! Planning before you spend money is the best way to make sure there’s money set aside for necessities and savings, while still giving yourself room for other things, like fun and generosity.
This week we’ll walk through adding money to our Envelopes and tracking our expenses. Later on, we’ll spend some time reflecting on how things went. Let’s get started!
Today’s Assignment
- To get started, we recommend setting up a few more things in Goodbudget. First, add the Account you plan to track — we recommend adding your primary checking account so you can budget with money you currently have. This video also shows you how to create Debt Accounts that link to the payment Envelopes you made last week. Next, add your income.
- Start filling your Envelopes. When you fill your Envelopes, you’re setting aside the money you need for the items you plan to spend on or save for. That way, as you go throughout the month, you’ll be able to buy groceries as needed without having to worry about dipping into your Rent or Savings Envelopes. It also means that when the car breaks down, which it will, it’ll be no more than a minor inconvenience because you’ll have already saved up for car repairs. How great is that?!
- Now that you’ve filled your Envelopes, spend some time reflecting on when you’ll pause before spending. In what situations might you want to pause for 24 hours before you spend? What’s the dollar amount for those kind of transactions? In what situations would you check in with your partner before spending?
- Did you notice anything surprising when you reflected on the above? Comment below and let us know.
Note for couples: Decide together about when to check in with each other before spending. A lot of couples like to choose an amount that’s okay to spend in one shot. Then, before any single expense that’s higher than that amount, they check with each other first. This gives each of you freedom to do what you need to do, while also making sure you’re on the same page about the big stuff. And of course, you’ll still be able to see everybody’s spending after the fact since Goodbudget syncs between your phones and makes it easy to share.
That’s all for today! Tomorrow, we’ll talk about how to become more aware of our spending. See ya then.
Happy budgeting,
-The Goodbudget Team
8 thoughts on “Set Aside What You Need”
I think I like to sleep on most spending decisions, even minor ones. If I wake up the next morning and still want the thing, I figure it’s not just a passing thought.
I like the idea of pausing before making a purchase. Coming from the holidays we probably made a ton of impulse purchases, some needed some not so much so this will be a great time for us to even begin planning for such things as next Christmas and vacations.
I like that the course shows that it’s important to pause before making a big decision. In my experience, I take a lot longer than 24 hours to think about the big expenses – in fact, I usually think about big expenses several times over several days or even months. That helps me to know that the big purchase is something either very necessary or something I really want.
I am very afraid of the Auto-fill feature so I manually fill my envelopes.
I wish there was a chance to review the auto fill, adjust the numbers, or undo the fill. To understand or control the decision more.
Hi Michaelette,
You can definitely edit and adjust your automatic Fills. Any automatic Fills will appear at the top of your transactions list as [Pending], where you can click on them again to view their pending changes as well as make edits and adjustments. You can also undo posted automatic Fills by deleting them, or remove them from being automatic by deleting the [Pending] line.
Hope that helps!
We will discuss every purchase right now until we have everything under control. Then we will reevaluate the situation.
Regarding this text:
Today’s Assignment
To get started, we recommend setting up a few more things in Goodbudget. First, add the Account you plan to track
The link to Add the Account is broken. I got a 404 Error message.
Thank you for this. I am slowly working on it. I did put amounts into each envelope and label the envelopes so far. I did it over two days and it was good.