r/budget

I've been doing my budgeting a little differently lately, and I'm curious if anyone else does something similar.

For years, I tracked my fixed expenses in Excel - rent, insurance, subscriptions, groceries, etc. Basically the usual monthly overview of where the money goes.

But at some point I started tracking individual events instead.

Things like:

• vacations
• weekend trips
• wedding
• birthdays
• moving
• bigger projects or purchases

Instead of just having a category like “travel,” I create an overview for each event and track everything that belongs to it.

And I mean everything. For a vacation, that might include transportation, accommodation, restaurants, activities, little purchases along the way, etc.

I've been doing this for a while now and something interesting happened: I've started building my own little catalogue of event costs.

After a few vacations, I can look back and see what previous trips actually cost me. Same with weddings, family events, moving, and so on. When something similar comes up again, I have a much better idea of what budget I should expect.

It also answers a question that a normal monthly budget doesn't really answer:

“How much did this thing actually cost me?”

A monthly budget tells me what my normal life costs. Event-based tracking tells me what it costs when something out of the ordinary happens.

It has also made budgeting for future events much easier because I can use previous events as a reference instead of guessing.

I saw a recent post here about budgeting from CSV exports rather than using automatic bank syncing, and it got me thinking about how differently people approach budgeting in general.

So I'm curious: does anyone else budget around events/projects rather than only monthly categories?

I'd love to know if I'm accidentally building a very nerdy personal “event cost database” that other people are doing too. 😄

When I have followed the 30% rule for rent, I have always based it on my net income. So, if my take home pay after taxes, health insurance, what I choose to put into a 401k, etc. is let's say $7,500, then my max rent or housing payment is $2,250.

I am apartment hunting right now and people I have asked or compared to are spending much more on rent. I asked and some of them are basing it off their gross income because that is technically the requirement to qualify. I guess I can understand that...most landlords do accept you if you make 2.5x-3.5x the rent with your gross income.

So, what do you do? Also, if you do not follow the 30% rule, what do you do instead?

I recently realized that the expenses hurting my budget most weren't necessarily the big purchases. It was all the small stuff I barely thought about.

Subscriptions I forgot about, random food orders, convenience purchases, impulse buys, etc.

What’s one expense you didn’t realize was costing you so much until you actually started tracking it?

Monthly take home is about $6,600. Rent including utilities is $2,000 - $2,200. I have around $19k in student loans, plus $800 that I want to be given to my parents for financial assistance. Basically I just want some ideas on how I should visualize my budget, what categories should be prioritized and the weightings for each bucket.

My roth IRA is maxed for the year, I'm still on my mom's health insurance so I don't have an HSA, receive no 401k match (ass) and I am prohibited from trading individual securities for work. I also have about $13k in money market currently as my emergency fund (how much should this expand to for a 6 month buffer?). Thanks.

23 year old 3rd year teacher in South Carolina, single, no kids, starting my second full year of living without any financial assistance from my parents. I lived with them my first year teaching and saved most of my money, so I have something to fall back on, but I don’t want to dip into that. I want to be able to afford my life off the paychecks I currently get.

It’s been hard. It’s only halfway through the month and multiple of my budget categories have already reached capacity and the rest don’t have much wiggle room left.

I grew up living a lifestyle that did not include worrying about money until college. I couldn’t have or do whatever I wanted, but I never worried about my family’s financials; I knew we were fine.

Now, I am struggling and I can’t tell if I’m being unreasonable about my expectations and wants. There are things I feel I “should” be able to afford but actually can’t. It makes me wonder how other people seem to be doing so well, but I’ve also come to realize tons of people just go into credit card debt so they can do “fun stuff.”

Here’s my current budget. Looking for advice/feedback. I already know there are things I could adjust, I just don’t want to give anything up. I’m struggling to prioritize. Thank you for any help <3

My Budget (Monthly)
💰 Income
Work: $3000
Total Income: $3000
💸 Expenses
All Bills : $1460
Gas : $120
Therapy: $64
Roth IRA: $200
Savings/Emergency/Unexpected: $200
Groceries : $355
Medication and Dr. Appointments: $240
“Fun Money”: $360
Total Expenses: $3019
📊 Summary
Total Income: $3000
Total Expenses: $2999
Net Savings: $1

Monthly Budget Category Notes:
- Groceries: I shop at Publix. I know there are cheaper stores. I just absolutely hate any grocery store that isn’t Publix. Publix is always clean, well stocked, and calming. I really don’t want to give it up but will if I have to.

- All Bills: This covers my rent, power, student loan payments, internet, Disney plus/hulu ($9.50), car, and phone

- Gas: Have to get once a week, approximately $30/week

- Savings/Emergency/Unexpected: I use this for unexpected costs outside of my regular monthly costs. For example, I used almost all of it to pay my car tax this month. If I don’t end up using it, I just let it sit there and think of it as “savings” but the kind I’m allowed to spend if necessary.

- Medication and Dr. Appointments: I unfortunately have to go to the doctor fairly often, usually 1-3 times a month. I have 5 prescriptions, varying in price and refill frequency.

- Fun Money: This is for my wants, but also things like a refill of a makeup product or a shampoo refill. I hardly shop for “fun” at all. Most of this money is spent on eating out. I eat out 2 times a week, never anywhere fancy/ more than $20. So if that’s roughly $160 on food, that leaves me with $200 for experiences, gifts, clothes, haircuts, beauty products, etc.

Created with sharemybudget.com

I’m not sure if this is the right place to do this, but I am in need of guidance. As the title states, I am a full time grad student in desperate need of a budget. I still live at home in NYC and I have another year before graduation. I was never taught how to budget. I’ve saved a little money here and there, but never a substantial amount that would allow me to be self sufficient. My main goal is to save some money to go towards moving out and living with my partner within the next 2-3 years, in addition to paying off my credit card debt and eventually my student loans.

I work part time making $20 an hour, but I work about 20 hours a week or less depending on how much time I need to devote to my program. My monthly income fluctuates, but I would said it is anywhere between $1000-1200 a month. I know it is not a whole lot to work with. I tried finding some side hustles/part time jobs, but no one can accommodate my schedule. I did get work study from my school ($2.5k per semester), so hopefully that will make a bit of a difference.

I have about $3.5k in credit card debit and about $25k in student loans.

I opened a hysa earlier this year to start an emergency fund. I current have about $1k in there right now because I had work less due to my summer coursework. I started a 401k with my job, but the percentage is not a lot (roughly $20-30 per paycheck).

I don’t pay rent, but I buy my own groceries and pay for the streaming services for my family. I would say groceries is about $100 a week and the other services I pay for is about $150 for the month. I take public transportation and that is usually around $20-35 dollar a week. No car at the moment. I also have to start paying for my own health insurance by the end of this year, so that’s another thing I have to figure out. Sometimes I have to build things for school but I would consider it a miscellaneous expense maybe $50-75 a month.

I plan on cooking more at home, cutting back on eating out/uber, and doing cheaper things when I see my friends. Just reducing my overall spending.

I don’t know where to start or how to really make my situation better. I would greatly appreciate any help you may have to offer. If additional information is needed to better understand my situation, I will gladly provide it. And I apologize in advance if this is not allowed or if I’m asking dumb questions.

i've tried and abandoned probably four budgets over the years and i finally figured out the pattern. it was never willpower or the wrong categories. it was the entry step.

every time i started with a spreadsheet, day one was great. i typed in everything, felt organized. by day four i'd bought a coffee and a couple random things and just... didn't feel like opening the file to log $3.75. skip one day, then two, and now the numbers are wrong so opening it feels pointless. the whole thing goes stale and i quit.

what i eventually noticed is that the real problem is friction plus shame. the longer i went without logging, the more opening the budget felt like getting scolded. so i avoided it, which made it worse, which made me avoid it more.

the two things that finally kept me going:

1. logging a purchase in seconds, right when it happens, instead of a batch entry session later. if it's fast enough it stays accurate enough to actually trust.

2. treating a missed day as a fresh start, not a failure. once checking in stopped being punishment it became just a quick glance, and that's sustainable.

curious how everyone here handles the entry part. do you log in the moment or sit down weekly? and does anyone else get that avoidance-because-the-numbers-are-wrong spiral, or is that just me?

Hi everyone! I’m a 20-year-old university student currently living in a small studio flat with access to a communal lounge. I love hosting friends and family—especially visitors coming from out of town—and often have group gatherings of 5+ people over at a time. However, the severe lack of space is becoming a major issue. My studio can’t comfortably fit more than one person overnight, and having guests sleep on the couch in the communal area leaves them completely exposed with zero privacy, making overnight visits really uncomfortable and awkward. To be honest, I would just love a bigger space, so I’m considering moving into a 2-bedroom flat. They typically go for £1,100–£1,200 per month excluding utilities in my area. Since my current rent is all-inclusive, I’m not sure how much standard bills (electricity, gas, water, internet, etc.) usually cost each month. Below is a breakdown of my current monthly budget—based on these numbers, would moving into a 2-bed flat be a smart financial decision

Living expenses
Rent
£850
Food
£200
Home essentials
£25
General spending
£150
Phone
£15
Apple (storage)
£3
Prime
£9
Spotify
£6
Netflix
£6
Apple (insurance)
£10
laundry
£40
Transport(uber)
£30
ring
£5
bus pass
£40
Curry’s
£20
Total
£1409

Income
£2300

Spending
Living expenses
£1409
loan
£100
Emergency fund
£100
ISA
£200
General savings
£150
travel
£100
Gift fund
£50
Shopping fund
£50
Nails
£70
laser
£35
brows
£15
total
£2239
Left over
£21

If something costs 450, treat it as 500 in your head when planning your month.

It builds in a natural buffer for the small stuff you always forget to account for (tips, taxes, random add-ons) and you end up pleasantly surprised instead of consistently over budget.

So I just started a job where I get paid 800 per week. I just came off a horrible jobless drought for 6 months so I’m really behind on certain payments. This job is contractual for 6 months with a chance of extension (it seems high because they always talk about how many people stayed during the last hiring round.) So I’d finish at the end of December.

I’m trying to figure out if I should prioritize paying off debt or saving in the event I don’t get extended.

I’ve thought about using each weeks pay for certain things like this:
1st week - Groceries
2nd Week - Overdue Bills (Credit cards, etc)
3rd Week - Savings (maybe)
4th Week - Bills

Does this look right ? What’s your advice?

Edit: I get paid weekly

I turned 16 a couple of days ago.

I'm a pretty hard worker, I started working 10 months ago and also have a side hobby/hustle where I fix and flip bikes, I now have have 10,000 dollars on an 87.5% savings habit.

Problem is, because of my frugality as a teen, I find it very hard to go out with friends, because I honestly just prefer not eating/drinking anything due to the cost of everything being so high. Whenever I catch a train into the city with my friends, it's usually like a 50 dollar hangout. They don't really mind because they have a 15% savings habit. But I care too much, so I sometimes will just get a free water from Maccas.

The question I am asking is how do I have fun as a 16 year old with the rest of my friends without spending a ton of money.

I also have a hobby where I buy bike frames and build them up for myself, which costs money but is heavily subsidized by the bike flipping where I just use the cash I get for other bikes

This is what my months look like including the bike flipping

January
Earned 918.13
Spent 179.99
19.60%

February
Earned 796.08
Spent 0
0%

March
Earned 890.27
Spent 110.22
12.38%

April
Earned 1341.11
Spent 86.17
6.43%

May (This was a rough month because I had nearly-no cash flow but I also built up a bike)

Earned 803.48
Spent 277
34.48%

June
Earned 1165.93
Spent 29.67
2.54%

July
Earned 1418.49
Spent 304.93
21.50%

August (So far half way through)
Earned 892.54
Spent 27.19
3.05%

My goal which I set myself for the end of the year is 11000 dollars minimum.

Good morning,

In the comments of this post, you can:

• Ask for suggestions
• Discuss specific personal situations that clash with conventional budgeting platforms
• Make suggestions for platforms (Follow Rule 3)
• General questions about apps

Posts and comments about budget software outside of the weekly discussion posts will be deleted.

Freelancers, tip earners, commission folks - the standard advice of "assign every dollar a category" assumes a paycheck that's the same every month. When income swings between, say, €1,400 and €2,600, percentage rules and fixed categories both fall apart. Sharing the floor/ceiling structure that survived where those failed. Numbers are examples; scale to your situation.

Step 1 - Find your floor. Look at your last 6–12 months of income and take one of the worst months - not the average. That's your floor. The floor, not the average, is what you budget your fixed life on. Averages lie to irregular earners; a floor doesn't.

Step 2 - Build the essential budget on the floor. Rent, utilities, groceries, transport, minimum debt payments. If essentials exceed your floor month, that's the actual problem to work first - no template fixes it, but at least this makes it visible instead of ambient dread.

Step 3 - Define the ceiling rule. Everything earned above the floor in a good month gets a pre-written split BEFORE it arrives. Mine: 50% to a "smoothing fund," 30% to goals (debt/savings), 20% free spending. The percentages matter less than deciding them in advance - a windfall with no pre-assigned job becomes lifestyle by Friday.

Step 4 - The smoothing fund is the engine. It exists to top your bad months up to the floor. Target: 1–2 months of essentials. This is separate from the emergency fund - smoothing is for predictable variance (slow season), emergencies are for unpredictable events (transmission dies). Mixing them is how both disappear.

Step 5 - One weekly 15-minute review. Irregular income means faster drift, so monthly reviews are too slow. Weekly: what landed, what's the fund at, does next week change? Fifteen minutes, no shame spiral.

The honest limitations: it takes 2–3 months of discipline to fill the smoothing fund before the system feels calm - the start is the hardest part. And if your income is irregular AND below essentials on most months, this is an income problem wearing a budgeting costume; different toolkit needed.

For those with variable income: what's your split rule for good months, and did you separate smoothing from emergencies or run them as one pot? Curious what's worked long-term.

I genuinely need someone to explain where my money went.

It’s been ONE WEEK. I haven’t bought anything crazy. No expensive gadgets, no designer clothes, nothing.

And somehow my bank account looks like I’ve been financially supporting the entire campus. 😭

Food, random snacks, Uber, coffee, “small” purchases, going out with friends… apparently all those ₹200–₹500 transactions decided to team up against me.

The worst part is that every individual purchase felt completely reasonable.

“It's just ₹250.”

“It's just coffee.”

“It's just an Uber.”

And then I checked my bank balance. 💀

First week of college: 10/10 experience, 0/10 financial decisions.

Please tell me I'm not the only one. 😭

I'm always looking for ways to cut down on entertainment costs. It feels like everything fun costs money these days. Dinner out a movie concert tickets it all adds up so fast.

I used to spend a ton on going out with friends. Now I've found a few things that are actually really fun and dont cost much. Like hiking local trails or having board game nights at someone's house. Sometimes we just go to a cool park with snacks and chill.

What are some of your go-to free or super cheap activities that you genuinely enjoy and dont feel like a sacrifice?

I’m a 20-year-old guy working as a freelancer, and I’m fortunate enough to be earning a pretty good amount. The problem is that despite earning well, I’m barely saving anything.

I don’t really spend money on expensive clothes, gadgets, or other flashy things. I do waste some money on things like games, but nothing that should explain where all my income is going.

For the past year, I’ve also been financially supporting my entire family because my dad lost his job and has been unemployed since. Around 30–40% of my income goes toward household and family expenses. I’m completely okay with supporting them—that’s not what frustrates me.

The frustrating part is that I have no idea where the rest of my money goes.

There’s usually one big household payment at the beginning of the month, followed by lots of small payments almost every day. By the end of the month, I look at my balance and wonder where everything went.

I’ve realized my biggest problem isn’t necessarily how much I’m spending—it’s that I have no proper system for tracking or controlling it.

For people who’ve been in a similar situation, how did you fix this? What’s the simplest way to track income and expenses when you have lots of small transactions throughout the month? I’d especially appreciate advice from other freelancers or people supporting their families.

i gave up on the sync-everything approach a while back and switched to just downloading the monthly CSV from my bank and working off that. curious how many other people here do the same, because it feels like everyone assumes automatic sync is the only way.

the stuff that pushed me off sync:

- the re-auth loop. anyone who used Mint remembers the "we couldn't connect to your bank, please re-authenticate" email. the app that's supposed to show you your money stops showing it, usually right when you wanted to check.

- automatic import is kind of a rear-view mirror. by the time a transaction pops up, the money's already spent and the decision's already made. it never actually changed my behavior, it just recorded it.

- i never loved giving an app a standing key to my whole account. downloading a file myself means i decide what goes in and when.

the tradeoff is obviously more manual effort, and if your bank's CSV export is messy the categorizing is annoying. but honestly the ritual of sitting down once a month and going through the file has done more for me than any auto-sync ever did.

for the CSV people: do you do it monthly or weekly? and does anyone actually enjoy the manual step or is it just tolerated? for the sync people: does the sync stay reliable for you or does it break constantly like it did for me?

35 yo in high cost of living midwest city

net monthly income is 3575 and place i want to move in with my best friend is $1050 plus utilities which im estimating on the high end $500 a month (gas - electric- internet)

My current rent is $900 all included so im having a really hard time making the move when thinking about the extra $$ although its a nicer apt/living situation

no debt no car payment - $75 monthly for transportation

i’d have to dip into my savings for the actual moving cost and will be left with one month rent in savings basically if i move.

is this unwise to attempt? is the $400 month towards housing a bad idea?