How to budget with a pen and paper

September 21, 2023 10:54 AM

I've searched through for budgeting questions already and found a lot of useful info, but I'm specifically looking for reliable information about how to use a physical notebook to manage a personal budget - does anyone do this successfully? What's your system?

I know everyone loves it, but 'You Need A Budget' isn't available in my country (the UK) as far as I know and I can't afford to pay for a budgeting app anyway. However my bank (Monzo) already categorises all my expenses on the banking app and I can easily see what I'm spending and set categories and allocate budgets for each type of thing. It allows me to easily search by category etc - which should allow me to skip the often reccommended step of writing down everything I spend for a month and categorising it all, as this info is already there for the last few years. This would all be great except that Monzo is wildly inaccurate and unreliable when it comes to its budgeting features so it's never been properly useful for keeping me on track. I like the idea of doing this in an analogue way if possible (excel spreadsheets make me feel sick to look at) and am interested in if/how this works for other people.

posted by chives to Work & Money (5 answers total)

Best answer: I used something like these Budget Planners before I switched to a spreadsheet. There are probably free templates online, but I think the all-in-one notebook is worthwhile for the pen and paper route.
posted by veery at 11:13 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I'm a big fan of Mint, I don't know if that's an option for you, but I also do a lot of pen and paper notating of my money because I find it's a good way for me to process my ✨financial anxiety✨

When I do this, I don't get specific. I write down my expected income for the month (rounded) and then write down (again, rounded) my fixed costs: housing, average utilities, insurance, donations etc and a minimum grocery expense. Then I write down some flux expenses: more for the gas bill in the winter, vet visits if the dogs are due, more for food if it's going to be a busy month, any gifts I need to get that month, etc. I check this flux amount carefully to be sure I'm not going to have any surprises.

Then I subtract. What's left? Where can it go? Can I put more of each check into retirement savings? Am I experiencing lifestyle creep? Do I want to make a big purchase later this year, etc etc.

Things that are important to me when doing pen and paper: ideating ALL the things I 1) need to spend money on and 2) would like to spend money on. And ROUNDING. I can get down into fine percentages and pennies in Mint. Paper is for getting my thoughts down, and knowing broadly if I'm doing okay against my goals.
posted by phunniemee at 11:18 AM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: If you're talking about tracking your spending to stay within a budget you've already established, back in the olden days, my partner and I had a piece of paper on the counter with columns for each category we needed to track (I think they were food, household, separate entertainment columns for each of us, and miscellaneous). We kept a running total and started a new sheet at the end of the month, carrying over balances (or debits if we ran a little over).

This was after we'd already established amounts we decided were appropriate for each category. To do that we reviewed our incomes, fixed expenses, variable but mandatory expenses (like the heating bill), etc. and set discretionary spending accordingly.
posted by metasarah at 12:58 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks for these responses, I'll give these ideas a shot!
posted by chives at 6:19 AM on September 22, 2023

There’s a particular pen-and-paper Japanese style of tracking/bookkeeping/budgeting that you might like — it’s big on thinking about money as you spend it, not when you get a monthly statement.
posted by clew at 9:49 PM on September 23, 2023