Current Events > Tips for keeping a household ledger / keep track of finances?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Does Red Dead Redemption 2 method work well or is there an actual IRL technique used for effectiveness

If your question is sincere the best thing to do is get all of your monthly bills together , write each down and then total them. After that write down your revenue (money you bring in) for the month and total that. Then start subtracting your bills from your revenue.

After you get that total start factoring your misc. such as gas, groceries, cigarettes (alcohol), etc.

Do this for each month and you should start having a clearer idea of how much money you should have left over each month.

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Every few months I update my budget. I do it similar to what Jiggy said except I start with income. Its a balance sheet I guess. I open excel and start with monthly income then I do fixed expenses or bills. Then misc. stuff that you spend money on like going out, or clothes, or random bets. I use the averages from the last three months, which is easy for me because I use a credit card for essentially 100% of my purchases and subtract it all from the income. Then you have an idea how much you have left over monthly so you can adjust your retirement or other savings with that extra money.

They really should teach basic personal finance in school. There are apps and stuff that do it automatically but you usually have to give them information for all of you online accounts which seems like a good target for a hack.

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I wanted to keep a ledger as inspired by RDR2 so we can see where our money is going and when and paid by whom. We already started an excel sheet.

My budget is an excel spreadsheet that's broken up by week.

Each week starts with that week's paycheck, subtract savings, gas, and groceries. Then subtract what bills are due before the next week's check.

Anything left over each week is split between spending money, paying off debt, and more savings.

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