78 sats \ 6 replies \ @Undisciplined 1 Mar \ on: We are pregnant meta
Congratulations!
You're helping us win the Battle of Ideas through sheer numbers.
I'd say you seem to be on the right track The first step is just realizing you need to take another step.
When I was a poor, single, college student (so, not at all in your situation), I was fastidious about budgeting. I divided all my expenses into four categories: Housing, Food, Education, Leisure. Then I allocated 40%, 30%, 20%, and 10% of my income to those categories, respectively.
That approach worked really well for me. Of course, you'll probably need different categories and/or weights, but imposing constraints can be very helpful.
Thank you! That's a pretty sensible breakdown. Did you keep that approach throughout your life, and did you ever add retirement to that list?
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My wife manages most of the finances now (my lackadaisical attitude towards getting bills paid drove her nuts) and we have retirement accounts from work.
Fortunately, we aren't stretched super thin financially at the moment.
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Paperwork is a soul-sucking skill that I have yet to exercise healthily. The bills, the insurance--all of that my wife has graciously agreed to take charge on. She's the color-coded calendar whiz that I am not.
I think if we sit down and agree on our allocations, she will gleefully account for them.
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I literally used envelopes of cash for this. After cashing my paycheck, I'd divvy it up into the four envelopes and that's what I had for those purposes until I got paid again.
It was very effective, but I think it would be overly inconvenient for someone managing a family budget.
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The cash envelope system is a Japanese method called kakeibo!
Some online banking platforms like Chase allow you (as in the generic you) to manage virtual envelopes. But that is assuming that you aren’t aspiring to get out of the fiat system haha: https://www.chase.co.uk/gb/en/hub/kakeibo-saving/
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I hadn't thought about it, but this method would be very simple with bitcoin too.
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