Withdrawal calculator

[Nick87]

That’s the beauty of it. After a few months you’ll know very close what they will be. And, you aren’t limited to what your budget is in those categories. Maybe your vehicle fuel bill is high one month because you drove out west to hunt. You can move money from another category to cover it. The point is that you shouldn’t be spending more than you make in a month, on average.

I’m sure it’s not for everyone, but for us, it was a game-changer. Financial stress has all but disappeared. We are contributing to retirement like never before. Paying CC on the day we get the statement, not the due date. And, we spend more, guilt free, on family vacations and fun stuff because we can look at the category and see that we have money dedicated to it.

I'll take another look at the app. We do the same just on paper. We've never really had a credit card balance but we do use them for a lot of things like gas and online shopping. But now we pay them weekly to help track things easier. That helps a lot too.

 

[Robg2]

Regarding tracking spending, I pulled out my hair trying to track everything, but some people might find that detail useful. What I settled on was just looking at my bank account final "debits" (total money going out each month) and then parsing things out that weren't actual expenses like money I transferred to a brokerage account, which will be spent later.

The one thing I track is vacation expenses since they are discretionary and large, especially if you like casting to bonefish. Other people might want to break down other discretionary spending, but food, gas, and utilities are what they are so I keep them as a lump.

 

[Nick87]

That’s the beauty of it. After a few months you’ll know very close what they will be. And, you aren’t limited to what your budget is in those categories. Maybe your vehicle fuel bill is high one month because you drove out west to hunt. You can move money from another category to cover it. The point is that you shouldn’t be spending more than you make in a month, on average.

I’m sure it’s not for everyone, but for us, it was a game-changer. Financial stress has all but disappeared. We are contributing to retirement like never before. Paying CC on the day we get the statement, not the due date. And, we spend more, guilt free, on family vacations and fun stuff because we can look at the category and see that we have money dedicated to it.

Moving it form one spot to another makes sense. We allocated all of our monthly expenditures and then give ourselves a weekly allowance that is to be used for whatever but other than father's mothers day, birthdays etc anytime we eat out it comes out of our weekly allowance. We started with 5% of our weekly net pay. I dave money wwy more when its cash in my pocket. Very hard for me to jamd it over to someone that way. When I initially told my wife the amount I wanted weekly she went nuts. I said its still a hell of a lot cheaper than not having a set amount I'm sure of that. If you dont do something similar it's awfully easy for money to dissolve. We used to set a certain percentage into savings every week and then invest or do home projects from there. That worked really well. But now our plan is to only put x amount into our checking for bills and the rest goes into a seperate account. And weeks I dont work we still pay ourselves out of there so it's like were on a much smaller salary than I'm actually making. Now that my work isn't as weather dependent as it used to be its a lot easier to do it that way.