Are you under or over budget in your spending for a year?  Did you stick strictly to your budget?  Did you miserably fail thus far?  There still are another six weeks to make small tweaks and changes to get your annual spending in line.
Definitely this year was a pretty big spending failure for us.  I [...]

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Okay, so whose fault is it when consumers get hit with overdraft fees?  On quite a few message boards, there is a common theme of I’m getting constantly hit with overdraft fees or bouncing checks.  So whose fault is it, the banks or the consumers?
Some would argue the bank, since they often have holding periods [...]

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How far out do you budget?  How far out do you project your cashflow?  Interesting question.  Personally I start the year doing an annual budget and I break it down monthly.  I do tweak the budget monthly because obviously stuff like home repairs, I set aside $500/month, but I use $2500 at once, this month [...]

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I don’t balance my checkbook. I can’t remember the last time I did.  I’m a personal finance blogger who has a budget, but I don’t balance my checkbook.  One of the first lessons I learned about personal finance was how to balance a checkbook.  My mom sat me down and had me help pay the [...]

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Slinky asked a great question last week, how do you track your spending if you have a joint account between two people?  Do you budget short term?  Long term?  Weekly?  She asks because as a part of a couple with separate accounts she says isn’t it tough to know whose spending what, when?  She says [...]

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Right now we are in a recession and people are losing their jobs left and right.  Also people are becoming concerned with meeting all their bills as prices of food, utilities, etc have risen expoentially for the past 2 years.  So why would you kick Dave Ramsey to the curb?
I believe that he’s correct in [...]

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Can you live without a budget?  This writer Shugar suggests that you can and should live without a budget.  I have to say he makes some persuasive arguments.
Personally I’d love to live without a budget at all.  But I don’t quite think we’re there yet.  He lives a very simply life and anything he wants [...]

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My DH isn’t really involved in our day to day finances. He has no idea what our grocery “budget” is, or what we pay for car insurance. He knows we have a mortgage, but probably couldn’t tell you the amount. He knows it’s with Bank of America, but wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage. [...]

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I was thinking today about people who only use cash to pay all their bills.  They withdraw their paychecks and segregate the money into “envelopes”.  Then they stay on budget because they can spend only that “preset” amount.
What would worry me is carrying around that amount of cash.  One thing that made me wonder about [...]

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Do you have a flexible income?  Meaning do you get paid commission or based on your performance?  Or are a small business owner?   How do you manage your income needs?  Money Magazine has an article with 5 tips for living on a flexible income.
First tip is to take your lowest income from the past 5 [...]

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