Living on a budget

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When my wife and I were first married, we had very little money. I think our income was a little over $100 a week. Of course things were cheaper then; our rent for a large ground floor apartment was just $75 a month and a pizza we'd share once a month was $1.10. Still, it wasn't easy to make ends meet, so we maintained a paper budget. I still have some of those old budgets and it does bring back memories to look at them. Things got better quickly. I'm not saying we were wealthy, but we always had enough to pay our bills. We bought a small house and new cars. We had to be careful with our money, but there was no need to budget stringently. There was always money left over. Now, we are mostly retired. Our income is half what it used to be. It's enough - we are not poor and we do enjoy ourselves, but we do have to budget again. We set limits on things like entertainment and even grocery shopping. I use Mint.com to do this. It watches all of our bank, credit card and investments. It lets me categorize each expense and post them against the budgets we have set. At a glance, we know if we can afford to splurge on an expensive night out or buy new clothes. It's far easier than our old paper budgets ever were. There are other programs similar to Mint, but they seem to have the best reputation. They are owned by Intuit, the same folks who make Quickbooks and Turbotax. When people new to Mint ask me about it, I do recommend it, but I suggest just setting it up and letting it run for several months before setting strict budgets. It can be surprising to see how much you spend in certain areas and often things pop up that you have totally forgotten about. I let my Mint run for three years before I laid down final budgets! If you need to budget, or think you may need to soon, I recommend this.