How do you record your finances/budget?

I willy nilly it..as long as their is money in the bank.

I don’t, but if I did I would definitely look into taking a class or weekend seminar on the subject. I say that because each household is different and I would want a professional to point me in the right direction. Many community colleges have 1–3 day seminars on such subjects.

I have a lined notebook that lists the basic bills divided by the number of members in my household, per paycheck. On a separate computer sheet is a detailed list of items that are bought regularly and their average price so it can be printed out and taken to the store if necessary or posted on the refrigerator to keep supply tabs on.

I have one credit card, one checkbook, one envelope of receipts, and one accounts (spreadsheet) book. Once a month I get all three out and cross record. I have paper records of all. Business and personal are separate in the same book. I do not do this on the computer.
If you are just starting, take a quick course in a night class.

@MaryW : so you put all of your receipts in the envelope and at the end of the month, what do you do with them? If you keep them, how do you store them and when do you finally get rid of them?

Very simple, I give my wife my MAC slips. She brow beats me and the accounts are balanced.

We hand write a budget for a few months at a time. We right our income at the top, then subtract all of our expenses (always rounding up), then subtract money we want to put into savings, and then we look at what’s left over. With what is left over, we will plan something fun to do, put a bit for both of us to have spending money, and any extra will go into savings.

I don’t order bank checks but a Visa/Debit card instead so any purchases I make will show on my checking acct. I can access online. I’ve also chosen not to have overdraft protection where my bank can charge me in excess of $30. each time an attempted purchase exceeds my available balance, I’d rather have a decline. Rarely do I not know how much money I’ve got available to work with and I make sure my necessities come first, it’s a great feeling not to carry balances and run up fees but it also means sometimes I have to wait to buy things or put others on layaway rather than grab n go.

Quicken

Another vote for Quicken.

Categories? That’s a toughy. I suppose it really depends on what you want to do with the information. I’m just curious about where I spend money. I have all kinds of categories—but I have a few broad categories:

Transportation (plane, boat, car, bicycle and all upkeep and insurance involved)
Food (groceries and eating out)
Home (includes all utilities)
Fun (movies, vacations, etc)
Health (by type of service)
Insurance (but I would get rid of this and put all insurance in it’s appropriate category—car, home, health… although where do life and disability go?)
Taxes (of all different types)
Children (expenses related to the kids)
Personal (maybe life and disability insurance go here?)
Gifts (tax deductible or otherwise)
clothing (which should be part of personal)
Education (except for us that is under kids, since we do not get any more formal education; our education now comes under personal or entertainment)

Anyway, you want to create categories that are useful to you for budgeting. How can you save money? Probably on food, entertainment, personal, transportation and some household expenses.

Anyway that’s how I’d think of it. If I was starting over, I’d have transportation, food, household, fun, health, taxes, children, and education. I’d put clothing and gifts and some of the insurance under personal.

There are, of course, many subcategories under each of these main headings. I have eight major categories which fits with standard categorization theory (between 2 and 9, with 7 being the optimal high number of categories). I’d try to trim out one more category—maybe fun belongs in personal, too. Like I say, it depends on what you hope to do with budgeting. It should make it easy for you to track expenses you are interested in. So, for example, I don’t care about all the individual amounts spent on different meals or different kinds of food. So I don’t track them. If I did care, then breaking it out by breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner might be useful. I might notice I’m spending ridiculous amounts on coffee, and decide to make coffee at home instead of buying it at Starbucks.

I actually spend about $12 per day on lunch and breakfast—at least on week days. That’s $60 per week, which is a little over $3000 a year. If I made my lunch or made my own coffee or latte, I could probably save at least half of that—$1500 per year.

Similarly, I could cut out vacations or books. I could insulate the house or put in low flo toilets and save on household expenses. Oh, there are a thousand and one things I could do, if I wanted to. At least I know where I spend my money so I can make a conscious choice about how to spend it. So, for now, Starbucks it is because I can afford it. Lucky me.