my joy in budgeting is complete

jon and i are learning the freedom of God with money.

money used to cause me a lot of stress and tightened-insides-ism (or anxiety).

through different means, God encouraged us to control and steward the money given us instead of the money controlling us. paul, in the Bible, often prefaces or concludes truth-statements with "make my joy complete," connecting the completion or fulfillment or fullness of his joy with sharing whatever truth with others. my mom told me last weekend that i always talk about our budget, budget-this and budget-that. i responded that this is a big, hopefully, life-long tip and help God taught and is teaching us.

our current budget method includes

deciding where we spend money ex groceries, gas, haircuts

alotting money monthly or bi weekly to each category based on income making sure to prioritize alottments ie giving then mortgage/rent then utilities then insurance, etc. ex groceries 10, gas 5, haircuts 2.5

creating a binder with a page per category, considering each category it's own account ex of a page

page for groceries (or g-1 indicating page 1 of groceries)

date name of place where groceries were purchased amount

basically, our pages look like a checkbook with the difference of each category having its own "checkbook" and running balance. this is helpful because when we had a budget but didn't separate our categories, we'd look at our balance online and think we had a lot of money in our account, but, really, that excess was excess in a particular category such as insurance since we only pay that twice a year. this method helps us to immediately see what's left for a particular category. we've determined to work with inputting our receipts once a week. this helps us to stay aware.

some helpful thoughts

keep your receipts it was hard for jon and i to remember to keep receipts, especially ones for small amounts. for items paid for in cash, we each have a small notebook that we keep in our cars or at work in which we'll record amounts. our system at home is to have a small cardboard box in which we keep past receipts that we've already recorded and a little bag in which we keep receipts we haven't yet recorded.

about transfering money you can transfer money! this is freeing. for example, we allow a certain amount of money for our two puppies per month, but this month they're getting neutered and spaid, which will cost more than our alottment, but we have extra money in our gas and cell phone categories, so we're transferring our needed amount. in our binder, on our dog page, we'll write under "description/name of place," "transferred from gas/cell," and on our gas/cell pages, we'll write under "description/name of place," "transferred to dog."

breathing room give yourself room to breathe. don't budget out to the penny unless it's a fixed amount like mortgage. give yourself maybe 15 extra dollars per category or whatever you feel would help your budget to breathe.

debt prioritize paying off debt. talk about freedom! God provided for us to pay off our car and credit card debt through bonuses and our lovely stimulus from our home purchase, (though consider federal and state returns or christmas/birthday money,) and it freed multiple hundreds of dollars per month. with our school debt, we are paying off mine at 1.75 times the required amount; at this rate, we should pay mine off in less than 5 years, after which we'll turn the amount we're paying toward mine toward jon's on top of the required amount, which should allow us to pay off all our school debt in a total of less than 10 years, which was the original time frame on just my debt! sure, there will be less money to work with today, but you'll know freedom from debt sooner.

if there are more questions, please ask! sharing this makes my joy complete!